+ DEAR FAMILY I will always love you because you are my Grandchildren.
And Nieces and Nephews and ‘Greats’ This is Grama talking,
I would love you if you were mean and ugly.
You are mostly tall, you all are good looking and have good minds—by accident of birth.
What you do with that---it’s up to you.
Your parents taught you to love God. They love each other, follow their example.
They are willing to go the extra mile and help anybody that needs it.
They taught you to brush your teeth. And to cleanup, when you get dirty.
(gum disease and loosing your teeth, runs in our family, you better remember that)
No garbage in your eyes, ears - and it won’t come out of your mouth.
Ryan, Tommy's son started at Lamar University, to be a ‘Construction Missionary’, build churches, schools and orphan homes. He studied hard, his grades were the highest.
He never dreamed that the Navy would come along and offer to pay for his college-- If he made top grades and would serve 4 years as a Civil Engineer for them.
(Tommy and his two sons finished college without getting loans.)
Ryan married Laci, she wanted to be a teacher. She finished her 4 years of college in three years. After the first year, she got scholarships, because of her good grades (hard studying) They graduated the same week.
She and Ryan were still cleaning the church, and serving as active Youth Ministers.
She taught school one year, in California, before Lynzi Grace was born.
Laci was born and raised around Houston. In California, she might say,
"I'm fixing to go to town." Or "I'm fixing to bake a cake." Her friends would ask her,
"What's broke? What are you going to fix?" She learned to not say that.
You are not born with ‘drive’ like that, it must be taught, mostly by example.
That is where my Grandchildren have an advantage over so many others.
'Poppy and Mommy' was Thelmer's parents, a simple religious couple, not much schooling. The eight grade was the top then, just the bible. 'They raised good kids.'
Our middle son Tommy, Ryans father, has chosen 'Poppy' to be the name for his grand children to call him. The name lives on. 'Poppy'
Your Dad got his example from “His Dad”.
You live in a wonderful time of the world. Technology is here for you to end up on top Computers, electricity, they can’t go far without ‘heating and air conditioning’
‘Environmental Control’ is the fancy name for it. That was what Thel ‘worked’, on all the airplanes that were built at General Dynamics, for the years between 1947 and 1974.
Starting with the B 36 and ending with F111.
THEL was a barefooted son of a share cropper, 'picking cotton' in the cotton field, when he heard a strange noise and looked up and saw his first airplane. (no pictures, they had no newspapers nor magazines in their home)“I would have given my right arm to be able to fly," Twenty years later, he was 26 years old in the army, in Mineral Wells, he paid for his own flying lessons, and soloed.
He later owned 3 small airplanes and was in the Civil Air Patrol Auxiliary.
We were married and always careful with our money. My Mama and Daddy never said any thing about what he spent on flying. (But they thought it was just 'throwing money away.' I knew how much that he loved it.)
After his discharge from the army October 4, 1945. He got a job at a butcher shop in Safeway, in south Fort Worth. Then he got on at Meacham Field in north Fort Worth, repairing small airplanes. There Roy and Fudge Taylor started ‘The Southwest College of Aeronautics.’ Working on planes and teaching students to fly.
They got on an argument with the city, over the price of airplane fuel. Thel flew their airplanes to other airports around town to get gas cheaper. A spark plug come out of the plane that Thel was flying, over Lake Worth. He managed to get it to a landing field. He worked and studied too. He took every course that he could get.
It was the first time in his life that he had the oportunity to go to school.
He flew pretty regular to Wichita Falls and brought back a heavy suitcase. He wasn't supposed to know that it had bottles of whiskey for their 'parties'. Some one else had flown the suitcase in from Arkansas.
Roy had a daughter and she ditched her boy friend. He was going to get even with her. He come to the field and stole an airplane of Roys, after dark. He was going to crash it into Roy's house. He got confused in the dark and crashed it into a house a block away, he was not hurt bad. Thel helped take the plane apart and get it off the house.
Thel drove across town to TCU for two classes in 'Theory of Flying Aircraft' and 'Airframe Theory'. One important test had 100 questions, mostly numbers and abbreviations. I remember giving him review questions—over and over. He was determined to make good. He and a friend that he worked with, they were the oldest in the class. (the ones that the college kids hate)The teacher got up and was kinda smart. He announced that two people in that class had made 100, and that wasn’t possible.
Thel jumped up, he knew that if anyone made 100, it was him.
He offered to bet the teacher--anything. “Give the test over orally, right now!”
The other man nearly had to be pulled off of that teacher. The teacher backed down.
They would not give him ’college credit’ because he did not have a high school diploma.
He went on to school and earned his ‘A and E’ LIFETIME Federal licenses to ‘stamp off’ all aircraft engine and airframe work, that he or anyone that he approved--did.
That license was important to him; in his work; the rest of his life.
He took every class at
Any ex-soldier could get help to get an education. He got a $90 check from the government each month, for going to school full time. He was paid 40 cents an hour for working, full time. We had no thought of being poor.
We bought a new 24 X 24 house with cement floors, at 3418 N Houston St. We paid it out, $18,000. The only one of our four homes that ever had a morgage. It was near his job and school. We were so happy, I called it my ‘doll house'. The open gas hot water heater was in the back of the long clothes closet. Thel worried, but it never did catch fire.
Every trip we made to my folks, at Breckenridge, they gave us good vegetables, butter and canned food. They gave us a pretty wooden ‘ice box.' The neighbor did not have one. She made some Jello for their supper and brought it over and put it in our ice box. Benny Thel come in to get a drink and saw the Jello. He got him a spoon and ate some of it.
We had a big printed card that we could set in our window, when we needed ice.
The 'Ice Man' would drive by in his little truck and see it. He would come into our house and put the ice in our ice box. A few years earlier, it would have been a horse drawn wagon- that was bringing us the ice.
We were happy when we found a new Gibson refrigerator to buy. There had been none made during the war. I 'made a garden' in our rocky back yard, a tractor plowed it first. Then I 'worked it' by hand. I enjoyed it, Thel never touched it. He was always working on our old car; and he never turned any overtime down. We ate a lot of vegetables and pinto beans, we liked them.
Thel lived to be strong and erect untill 97. I'm mowing the yard at 94
Thel remembers------- “I was in the second grade, in Oklahoma.
Poppy bought a new 1923 Ford truck and built a bed on the back of it. He had the ’Grey Wagon’ franchise to move people in the little towns of Dewar and Kusa. Because of the franchise, there had to be a licensed driver. Poppy took me and I got a drivers license.
Poppy had a job at the smelters there. I stayed out of school and drove the truck and moved people.
We moved back to Briartown. I was ten years old when I got my first ‘real job’. It was cleaning spinach and loading it in boxcars. I got paid eight cents an hour, that spring. Others had been paid 10 cents for picking a bushel basket of the spinach leaves.
I seldom got to work over five hours a day, sometimes it was 10. We had to ‘take the bench’ when there wasn’t a wagon to unload. We set there and waited until another wagon load of spinach was pulled up. We were all glad to have that job, usually 40 cents a day. I walked three miles to work, and went to school, when I didn't have work.
Lee and Truman married young. After watching their antics, I privately decided that I wasn't going to get married. I was the oldest boy at home, we had crops to work. There is a lot of work to raising a cotton crop. The teacher come and talked to Poppy. The last schooling that I had, was the 6th and 7th grade, only on Friday afternoons, that was so I could play on their basketball team. I was good at it- I could catch balls that people wouldn't think that I could.
“I always wished that Poppy could have managed some way---that I could have gone to school.” There were eight of us at home, we had to eat.
Then we started digging coal. There was a mountain about three miles from our house. We started digging; where we could see coal. They called us together, at the mine and said that they were starting something new, Social Security, in 1930? If we gave one cent out of each dollar that we earned, there would be money to take care of us when we were old. That sounded good to us.
John L Lewis, the head of the coal miners union, he came and talked to us . He convinced us that if we would strike, we would get more pay. That sounded good to us. We struck. But----they wouldn't pay us more. They closed the mines.
Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1933. There were no jobs. He started the Civilian Conservation Corps. By July, 274,000 young men from 18 to 30 had signed up. Young men could stay in it for 18 months. The $30-a-month labor battalions were based in nearly 3,000 camps across the U S. They planted more 3 billion trees, built thousands of miles of roads and trails, fought fires, battled floods,dug drainage ditches,constructed dams and curbed Dust Bowl erosion Jackie said that, on her and Stanleys tour of Big Bend in Texas, there were nice trails and picnic tables that had been built by the 'CCC boys' so many years ago.2014,
I was in the CCC for 18 months so that my family could buy food with the $25 that was sent them, I got $5 a month to spend. My brother Lawrence,soon joined the CCC I was soon drafted into the army for five years, serving in North Africa and Italy. I was very lonesome and homesick, both in the Civilian Conservation Corps and the army.
I would not have been in either the CCC or the army; if there had been any way that I could have got out of being there. My family was hungry.
In the army I had a friend who dated; his girl, she said that she had a neice. So we double dated. I had a car, she got a “dear Jane" letter from a boy friend who had joined the army. I pealed her an apple with my pocket knife and wiped her tears.
I guess I forgot my resolve to never get married. Anne Louise Knight
My sister Opel was real sick. The quickest way that I could go and see her,was to hitch hike. I wore my dress uniform and officers cap. Anyone would pick up a soldier, no one thought of any danger. I had been to see Opal in the hospital in Muskokge, Oklahoma, and was on the west side of Weatherford, just seventeen miles from Camp Wolters. I would get back to the kitchen where I was Mess Sgt, on time for my shift.
A sheriff car pulled up and stopped. I thought, “Boy I sure are lucky.” One of the uniformed deputies got out of the front seat and told me to get in. He got in the back seat. They turned the car around toward Weatherford. I told them that I was going to Camp Wolters. They punched me with a gun and told me to 'shut up'. I wanted to tell them that they could call the hospital in Muskogee and find that I had been there. They punched my neck so hard that it hurt and said they would shoot me if I didn't hush. I believed them.
They drove to the Parker county courthouse. After several hours, they put me in a 'line up', I was the only soldier in it. A tottery old lady come down the line, she stopped at my uniform and looked and looked. They had me say several things to her. Finally she shook her head, “No, he is not the one.”
They told me that I was free to go. I was boiling mad, it was the first time I had been allowed to talk. “You have held me until I am AWOL from the army!”
They put me in a car and took me to Camp Wolters and told them why I was late.
I was boiling mad, I went to the Camp Provo Marshal. He told me to forget it, “We have to get along with them, over there at Weatherford.”
The next day I was still mad. My friend Sgt Ray Bennett and I checked out two army 45's and ammunition. He borrowed Ludies car and we drove to the Weatherford court house. We prowled that court house, with our loaded 45's. We looked into every open door. If I had seen one or both of those sheriff's deputies, we would have shot them.
I would have considered that they were 'paid for' because of the way they had treated a U S soldier.
I have had a hard time raising my three sons, feeling the way that I do about cops.
Opal died, Nov 20, 1941 and I went to her funeral and back again to see my folks at Christmas. I hitch hicked, no problem. Dec 27, 1941 Louise and I married.
JANUARY 21, 1947, Texas, A big strike was over at Chance-Vought, Convair, later General Dynamics. I got a job there, building B-36 airplanes, starting at $1.04 cents an hour. I remembers figuring, “If I could get a few cents an hour raise and get the ‘night bonus’, I could ‘bring home’ $40 a week.' That would be real good pay.”
Move house here some good things in the other Dear Family.
I made a garden in the rocky soil of our back yard. A tractor plowed it first, then I did all the digging by hand. We ate a lot of beans, we liked them, Thel never was interested in yard or garden or washing or cleaning the car. My Mother always helped my Daddy in every way that she could. I did too.
Thel soon joined the union, if there was no union in such a big plant-- a foreman could hire his brother-in-law without any good training, over anyone else. He became active and was a Committyman for years.
Thel was quick to join a union-negotiated savings plan. The company kept a bit of money out of each paycheck, they matched it. It was small, but it grew over the years. He said that he had heard men say, as they retired, that they didn't have the money to make the next payment on their home. And they had thought that they couldn't afford to put that small amount into the savings plan.
He took a blueprint reading class and every other class that he was offered. He finally was in a position of choosing; if he could go to school - or not. He could figure things about as quick as the engineers. He had his own system. Benny, Tommy and Richard would bring math homework. Thel would show them how to get the answers. Teachers would say, ‘The answers are correct, but that isn’t the way they should learn it’.
Richard says that his Dad could --visialize spacial relationships.
He could carefully take apart any radio or motor and lay it out and when he put it back together- it nearly always worked.
The only building experience that he had; was helping Poppy build caskets for neighbors. And the small wooden floor to keep the corn off the mud, in their hog pen.
We saved money for lumber and Thel added a bedroom. When he built the window, he examined the other one and nailed the frame up—one board at a time.
It worked fine. When he learned that a window frame was built and then set in place, he said, “I pity the poor sucker that has to take that window out.” Well it was him, because we soon saved money to build on a second bedroom and big garage. And later a bigger house, next door 3420 North Houston. Then an even bigger three bedroom new house at 5317 Dartmouth. He completely remodeled the old house at 2301 Gould in Fort Worth. He lowered the ten foot ceiling. Then new birch hardwood floors, like he put down in our first home, they were beautiful.
He bought three acres in Azle and had a duplex moved there. Remodled it into four nice bedrooms. Then built this two bedroom retirement home on Lake Granbury.
He did his own work--plumbing and electrical too- after he worked a full shift at Consolidated Vultee; later Convair and now General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin.
A friend gave him an 88 page booklet for the do-it-yourselfer, on wiring from GE.
He studied it. He used what he learned from that book-- to wire three nice homes for us. After he build them his self. He drew his own plans and dug his own ditches. He did not have to have permits for building his own house.
((Fifty years later he was helping finish the big new auditorium of the Church of God in Granbury.They needed a three way light switch and none of the men knew how to wire it. Thel wired it and it worked, three way. He come on home and a friend later told him that after he left, they took the switches he had wired, all aloose and examined them.
Several months later, a wind storm was blowing and turning up the shingles on it's big new roof. The preacher said, "I called all the men of the church and Brother Moore come. He and I nailed the blowing shingles down."
He took scrap pieces of the beautiful thin plywood they were using in the church and he made a nice looking guitar. Later two guitars and a mandolin and a dulcimer. We had an extra heavy home-made cotton matress, he gave it, to lay tightly under the floor, under the big piano on the platform, it made the sound better.
Under the floor, under the big piano- is his big creaper; to lay on his back and get around.
Thel liked to tell of the time that the preacher announced that Thel was 80.
A boy about six was setting on the other side of the big auditorium. Thel had pranked with him some. He got out of his seat and went around the back and then come and wiggled to set next to Thel, on the front seat.
In a loud whisper he asked, "Are you really 80?" Thel said, "Well I guess that I am."The little boy said, "You sure don't act like it." Everybody heard him,
During song service Thel got up and went to the podium. The pastor asked him why he come up there. "I want to teach you all another verse of that old song that you just sang." He did and they all sang it all, from then on.
They needed musicians at the Church of God. He had not held a guitar since he was drafted into the army 1940. None of the family remembered what become of that instrument. He was the only one of them who played an instrument. He bought a guitar and then a mandolin. He remembered the words of the old songs that he had 'led' in singing-when he was a boy standing on the organ bench- while his Mother was playing. Some of them had 6 or 7 verses, he remembered and sang them all, every time.
When Thel died at 97, he believed that he had been going to that church regularly. It had been three years. The loud music hurt his ears.)))
He laid thin strips to level our cement floors, in our first house and nailed down birch flooring. It wasn't off much; but he just had to have it level. He sanded it so smooth, and varnished it. I kept it rubbed slick and shiny, with Johnsons paste wax, the only kind then. We were proud of it.
TOMMY WAS BORN, he was two weeks old. I had him dressed and ready for me to drive to church. Thel said that he was just to young and we stayed home. We had just got a new black and white Bendix TV. He would lay on a pallet and raise his head so high, to look at it. We knew then- that he would be smart, looking at all of those amazing things. Benny would slide in his ‘sock feet’ and pull Tommy across the floor on his blanket, to make the floor shine. They had fun.
MEXICANS lived one block over, they got to standing out in the street and looking in the window, at our TV. There was lots of good wrestling then. Dock and Bill visited us and Lorene loved it, she ‘could tell by looking, that it was all real’.
And they showed live bull fights for a while, before color come in. Thel would set the TV in the window, we would set out in the yard---and there was a good audience.
The two De Leon brothers had families that lived on the next block. Alice was a daughter of one of them. For a while I kept her son Dickie, he and Benny were about four years old. She rode the bus, across town to Texas Wesleyan College.
One day Alice, embarrassed, asked Thel if he would, ”Please not dip your cookie in your coffee, when Dickie is around. Dickie has got to where he will not eat if he didn’t first dip his food in his milk. “Like ‘List Moore’ does.” (Thel has never dipped anything in his coffee since) Alice graduated in 1951, she taught 25 years in Fort Worth.
She was then bilingual director of all the Fort Worth Schools until 1991.
The big new Alice Contreras Elementary School is named after her.
Benny didn’t get far away from our house. But when a friend got red beans wrapped in a tortilla, he soon learned to be there, when they were handed out.
“It was the best thing I ever ate---those first hand made corn tortillas, my first time.”
Benny said the first pickup camper that he ever saw, Thel built it onto our 1949 pickup. No, it wasn’t new, he never bought a new vehicle.
The first car air conditioner that Benny ever saw, Thel built a box between the front seat and the dash and he sealed it with tar. He put a little block of ice in it and a little fan to blow over it. A tube to drain the water out the bottom, oh it felt good.
The first evaporative window coolers were expensive. Thel built us one, sometimes called a swamp cooler. A 3X3 foot pan at the bottom, held water. A pad of straw up the sides for the water to trickle down through. And a fan to pull the air through the damp sides. It had a strong wet wood smell that we liked—because it made such a nice cool breeze.
Thel was working the second shift in late March. He got up early one Friday morning and took the radiator and everything off the front of our 38 Chevy. He took the block down to be re-bored, before he rode to work with a friend. It was clear and the sun was shining all day. All the parts laid out in the yard. It snowed that night and covered it all. They mention that date - every year- when we get our last snow.
We soon saved money to build a garage. It was big, 12x24, with a cement floor.
JOYCE AND NOTCHIE were newly married and looking for work. They come to see us and lived in the garage until they 'got on their feet’. Joyce worked at Kress, first.
JUNIOR went with Lee to California, to find work. He wasn’t satisfied there and he come to see us in Fort Worth. He soon got a job at the cement plant. That’s about the time Thel built the first bedroom. Junior bought a motorcycle to ride with his friends.One friend rode into the back of a boat that was on a trailer, the motor tilted up. He split his head. Junior sold his motorcycle. A couple of years and Junior and Marie were married.
DOCK AND BILL lived in the Nowater comunity, SE of Porum, in 1937. Their baby, James Val, nine months old, had pneumonia. He was in the Muskogee hospital for three months. His Mother, Bill, Thel's oldest sister, never left him. They operated and removed a portion of his lung and cut two inches off a rib on his lower right side. They put in a drain tube and it stayed there for a year. Christene remembers they put a big diaper pin in it, so that he couldn't pull it out.
"Dock went 40 miles to the hospital, every day. One night James was so bad that he didn't come home. The three sisters, Lorene, Christene and Norma Dean were really scared. James finally did get to come home. He screamed every time that he saw a woman dressed in white, a nurse. They were very careful of him. The weather was hot and and his sisters fanned him and held thin wet cloths, so that he would be cooler. Of course he was spoiled rotten. His lungs healed and he voluntered into the military, no health problems, just a big scar.
(James in the Air Force, he was in Spain, it was under Dictator Franko. Early one morning he was going to work at the air base. Another soldier was driving the jeep. The jeep hit a tree in the island in the street and knocked it down. James had a head injury. The Spanish military grabbed them, berating them for carelessly damaging their fine old trees. They threw them into a dungeon and said that the Americans would never find them. James was sentenced to 20 years by Spain, before the Air Force found them, in three days. James remembers every detail. He has learned to live with it.
Then he was sent to England as a control tower operator. In the heavy fog, he was helping a plane land, it crashed. James was cleared of the deaths, on the ground and in the plane too. He has learned to live with that too. His Mother said that James was violent in his dreams at night. None of his three wives could sleep in the same room with him.)
They bought a 160 acre farm just out of Wainright, Oklahoma. $5,000 for the new
two bedroon house, big barn, out buildings, and land. The barn was built first and they lived in it, untill the house was built, last. The barn was painted red and the other buildings were painted white. Big brooder house and a one hole outdoor toilet.
Christene remembers they bought it on the very first FHA. When they were listing their finances, they were asked how much allowance the children were being given.
Dock and Bill had never heard of such a thing. They told them that they had to be given something. It was decided that each child would be given ten cents each month. Christene spent her first ten cents for a bottle of fingernail polish. It was pink, nearly clear.
She painted her Mother’s fingernails. They went to Porum that weekend and Bill hoped that no one would notice that she had painted fingernails.
It would have been ‘frowned on', for 'puttin on airs.'
"Our house never had any electricity nor plumbing. When we wanted water, we drew it out of our well. We used the large empty bathroom, as a third bedroom,for James.
Us four kids worked, on everything that was to be done. We never missed any of our schooling. We walked to school a mile and a half. It was war time, WW2 and we had to use ration stamps to buy every pair of shoes. We had galoshes to wear over them in the rain and mud.
Our first 'cash crop' was cotton.We pickled all that we could. Dock drove to Oktaha and brought out cotton pickers. He had to pay each one of them at the end of the day. James said they were black, I don't remember. We worked right along with them.
Then we raised peanuts. You got dirty because of the dirt on them. Even worse was the itching stinging chaff on the broom corn, that we raised. It looks kinda like a regular corn stalk, but it has no corn cob. and grows to eight feet tall. The top tossels were sold and sewn together on a factory, to make regular household booms.
Two weeks before it were dry enough to harvest, we went through the field and bent two rows together. We cut it with knives that fit on our fingers. The fuzz from the tossels on the broom corn, it blistered on our skin, when the sun hit it. We felt like that we got dirtier from the chaff on it, than the dirt from digging the peanuts.
We had a contract to sell hatching eggs to Swift. They would deliver baby chickens to us, by the hundred. When they got fryer size, we would sell the roosters to be eat. We would keep the pullets, to be our laying hens, to have the setting eggs to sell. We kept a flock of two to three hundred pretty White Leghorn hens.
There had to be a certain number of roosters with the laying hens, to be sure that the eggs were fertil and would hatch out live chickens. Swift picked up the eggs every other day. We might have two or three cases.
Christene remembers going to the barn and helping her Mother milk cows, by hand. We turned the handle on the big cream separator, it was hard, and sold the cream.
We had a pressure cooker that held six quart jars, or four half gallons. Every thing that we couldn't eat out of our big garden, we canned it. We had a huge pantry and Mama was working all the time to store more food on it. I never saw a store bought can of food in our house.
"Up in the hills around Porum we would find wild plums and gather 2 or 3 washtubs full, and bring them home. We would can the pulp and use it for pies, jelly or drink it for punch.
We were close and went to look at Bell Starr's grave. Lots of others had been there and they had chipped the big stone down to a foot high nubbin. We thought it would be fun to send our Aunt Louise and Benny Thel, a piece of Bell Starr's tombstone. Uncle Thel was fightin;g Germans in Italy, in 1941.We mailed them a piece about as big as your fist.
They got it and Benny Thel was playing on the floor with his aunt Alicea and his uncles Eldridge and Stanley. Benny Thel picked it up high and 'gave' it to His Uncle Elddridge-right on top of his head. That little spot sure did bleed, for a minute.
In the fall, early in the day we would go to a big peach orchard near Muskogee and buy three or four bushels of their overripe peaches. We went right home and canned them. We boiled the good plum and peach pealings to make juice and jelly. Every fall we tried to have 1000 jars filled. I never saw a 'store bought' can of food in our house.
An ice truck come by our house, three times a week. If we wanted ice, there was a big card in our window that told him, how much. James always run out and if the man had any little chips of ice, he would hand James one. He did and drove off. James was in 'hog heaven,' untill one time he got that ice hung in his throat. He couldn't talk or breathe, I was so scared, I picked him up and run 1/4 mile with him, toward a neighbors.Then the ice melted and he was all right.
James, in 2012, he was trimming a tree, in Oklahoma. He fell out of it and broke his arm. He called Christene in Bakersfield. He asked her to call 911 for him. Christene has eye problems, it's the retinas detatching. She has not driven a car in ten years. No one else in the family has had that problem. She has four good daughters, no grandchildren.
Gasoline was rationed, more liberal, for farm equipment. Dock had a big barrel of that, on a stand, out by the barn. Dock had brothers and nephews that were in the army, Bill did too. We were patriotic and Dock was very carefull not to use any of that rationed 'farm' gasoline for pleasure, in our truck.
One trip back from Muskogee, the truck run out of gas. Bill had to walk to get gas for the truck. When they got home, she told Dock, "I'll never walk again for gas for the truck. You fill that truck up with gas, out of that farm gas barrel."
We learned good managment skills. The 25 year loan--we paid it off in five years!
Dock had to handle the heavy tractor hook ups and sacks of feed, his back couldn't take it. Drought and hard times come to the farm, everywhere. Peanut prices went down. Lorene married Joe Gehrig and Christene married Albert Lloyd McCoy
Dock come and stayed with us, in Fort Worth, until he had a job and a house for Bill, Norma Dean and James to come to. Dock got a job packing 22 shells in a box; get them just right and 100 fit in. He got paid so much for a box. He made pretty good money doing that, until they got caught up. James was a sophomore in high school. He surprised Dock by being able to sell their peanut thrasher, before Dock moved them to Fort Worth.
Norma Dean got a job at Arthur Murray’s, she taught the tango.
In 1953 she was in ‘The Miss Fort Worth Pageant’. She was beautifull.
She probably never told anyone that she was born in a log cabin.
CHRISTENE AND ALBERT In a few years, Dock and Bill’s middle daughter, Christene and Albert and their two girls come to Fort Worth. They first made a bed on our floor and had an electric blanket. It was the first one that I ever saw, they laid it on top of their sheet, nothing on top of it.
Tommy wanted to turn the water hose on and play in it. "But Daddy, Theresa's Mudder lets her play in the wadder." He and Theresa were the same age.
Albert Lloyd worked at Leonards warehouse, General Motors and then Purina Mills. His Mother begged them to come back to Oklahoma. As they were loading up the truck to move back, Pan and Theresa wanted their Aunt Louise to make them some chocolate gravey. She did it in a hurry. (Like she later made chocolate pie for Bradley in California and French Toast for all the others, down the years)
You fry some bacon to get some fat, 'pig butter'. Stir flour into it and brown it lightly. Pour milk into it and slowly cook to thicken it. Add a little cocoa to make it brown, a very little sugar and a splash of vanilla. Spoon it over toast or hot biscuits;
you'll be surprised.
Christene says that Oklahoma was the hardest place in the world to make a living for a family.There were no jobs and the wages were lower.
Lorene and Joe had moved to California and said there were jobs and it was easier to make a living. So they moved there in 1964. Soon Christene was going to night UCLA classes in computer programing and was working as book keeper in the daytime. Punch paper tape, separate room, it had to have special airconditioning. She made twice as much as she could have in Oklahoma, if she could have found a job.
Albert was working with Joe Gehrig in construction. He got his right index finger cut off. The insurance company flew a specialist up from San Diego and he sewed it back on. After it healed and therapy, you couldn't see the scars. It worked fine. After Albert had his heart attack, he never worked any more.
They all thrived. Dock and Bill moved there too. Sonny and Chere was a popular song and dance team on TV. Bill worked at a shop and sewed sequens and bangles on her fancy dresses. Dock got a job making musical tapes for Anthony Brothers Music Company. The music was for background music for department stores and hotels.
LEE AND BOB come and stayed several months in the house with us. Lee got a good job at Convair where Thel worked. He got a house rented and then moved Annie and Lela June, when school was out. Lela June remembers that Benny Thel could shoot the rubber band guns, better than she could. Lee didn’t like his boss. They had to act like they were working; when sometimes there wasn’t work for them to do. Lee wanted to be a foreman. His family soon moved on.
VIRGIL stayed with us for a couple of months. He was liking it and working at Buddies big service station. A shyster come along and sold him a pretty shiney, cheap wrist watch. Thel tried to kindly tell him that he was snuckered. Thel felt sorry for him and gave Virgil, what he had paid for it. Thel wasn't plain enough. The same man come back, selling the watches and Virgil bought another one. His girl wrote him a letter, with a picture of her in a bathing suit. He went back to Porum and the first thing we knew, they were married. He has always loved roping. Last year at 72. he won two new saddles as ‘Champion Heeler’.
That makes 17 saddles that he has won.
He has won two horse trailers and over 40 fancy belt buckles.
They have a custom made coffee table with the belt buckles around the edges, under glass
He can't hear to good, but he says that he will rope as long as they let him. He can 'flick that rope up under the calf's back feet'; better than anyone else.
He has a granddaughter, seven, Danyel, that may beat him.
WILMA AND HENRY come and stayed in our garage for a while. It was pretty livable. Needy liked to set in a little cardboard box. She would lean over and rock and laugh. She and Faye Dean have always liked to laugh.
We loved them all and were glad that they came. It gradually seemed to me that they resented us. Was it; because we helped them in the beginning.
We bought and paid for the corner lot next door, 3420 North Houston. We lived in our big garage, while we built a nice two bedroom house on it. I remember that Thel made the texture on the walls, real rough. Thel did all the work his self, (working full time at Convair), except he had to hire a licensed plumber to get the city hook ups. I called on the phone and usually had his building materials, on site when he needed them. He bought asphalt shingles and most everything but the lumber from Montgomery Wards
Thel didn’t like the airplanes flying so low, from Meacham Field.(I do not remember an aeroplane ever falling onto a house from Meacham Field.) We sold the house and bought a lot in River Oaks, nearer to General Dynamics, where he worked.
Every time we sold a house; we gave our Sons part of the money.
5317 DARTMOUTH Thel built a bigger nicer three bedroom house, good garden area. Benny made a good playhouse, out under some big castor bean plants I planted.
He never took any time off from GD, to work on the new house. We lived there a few years and a rough family of kids grew up next door. We bought an older house at 2301 GOULD in north Fort Worth. The house had an old wooden garage, no floor, next to the alley, it was just barely big enough to get a car in. Thel got down in the dirt floor and worked on the transmission of our car there. He had to 'let it down', no power tools, in the winter. But he fixed it!
Thel lowered the ceilings and remodeled it completely, he put pretty new birch wood floors in it. They were slick and shiney too. He attached a two car garage. it was there that I turned the tall stool over; as I 'stretched up' to put in a new light bulb. Tommy and Richard were both standing there. I thought that it was to dangerous for them. I broke my heel, it healed, no problem.
Our house was on the corner, big trees lined the street.
City tree trimmers climbed ladders and trimmed on them, no power saws. Tommy loved to watch, he would go from window to window. He wanted to be a tree trimmer. He asked the boss, “Can just anybody do that, or do you have to be smart?”
And there was the ‘Donkey Man’ who drove his little cart up the alley, he went through peoples garbage. Sometimes people set 'goodies' out for him. Tommy watched for him and always waved. He always waved back. Tommy couldn’t wait to get big enough so that he could be a Donkey Man, if he couldn’t be a tree trimmer.
Our back yard at that house had trees and wasn't big enough for me to have a garden. It had some big playhouses built in it.
Tommy was five or six and he was starting to dig a hole in our back yard. He come down hard with the heavy pick. He come running into the house, "Daddy, I hit a spring in our back yard." Thel had to go and patch the hole in our water supply line.
Across the alley, the older couple had a dog. The man walked him every day. Thel saw the dog 'do his business' on our lawn. He stopped the man and told him to clean it up, that his two boys played there. He did. One day it come up a little rain shower and the man come back by, carrying his dog. He had his shirt off and wrapped around the dog.
Those same people called and told me that there was a grave in the alley, next to our fence. The boys had buried a cat and put up a little cross. I leveled it.
Benny graduated from Tech High School. We brought Aunt Hettie from Breckenridge to watch him get his diploma. It was in the big Will Rodgers Coloseum. It was a big long program. There was some big long cheering after some of the names were called. When Bennys name was called, Aunt Hettie stood up and let out a 'little old lady' yell- that Benny and everybody in that big place heard. Then she turned and glared at the rest of us, who hadn't yelled so loud.
When Thel was in the army in Italy, Aunt Hettie kept him for two days, while Mama was at Mineral Wells when Mama Gill was sick. He got out of her sight and she called him, she said that he answered."I right here." Benny, at three became her favorite.
Thel had gave him a car and he said that everyone thought that he was rich. He started to college in Arlington, there was a discount on tuition because of poor sight in his right eye. Our money was scarce and there wasn't money to change the oil in his car. Nor to buy gasoline. He got a part time job at Steel and then quit school to work full time.
Thel was going to sell his Aeronica Champ. “A man was going to pay me cash.
Before we agreed on the price, the man found an airplane to buy at Gainsville.
He paid the owner cash, then he killed him. He ‘took off’ in his ‘new airplane,’ with the cash---back to Fort Worth. When he landed at Russell Field, the police were waiting for him. That guys, brother in law called and turned him in.
“The man probably would have done me the same way.”
Benny went home from church with a boy. We were eating dinner and Thel got a phone call and left real quick. Richard was soon to be born. Thel wouldn't tell me what happened. He soon come back with Benny. They had been climbing a cottonwood tree and a limb broke. He wasn't hurt much. But Thel always 'had it in for cottonwood trees'. He had this fine one cut down, here next to the lake--30 years later.
Benny went fishing at Possum Kingdom Lake and brought home over half a garbage can of sand bass. There was no size or number limit then. Fish filleting hadn’t been invented, around us anyway. They were every one cleaned, the scales scraped off and then gutted. Benny never would bring that many home again.
Thel started going to the big North Side Assembly of God Church, about the time Richard was born. He helped at the Union Gospel Mission in down town Fort Worth. Many times he was the only leader there. Benny remembers going with him some.
Tommy remembers going with his Dad. "There isn't anything-like a kid standing up in front of a bunch of drunks; trying to play Amazing Grace on his trumpet." The men waited untill after the church service to get a good meal. One night Thel brought one of the men home to spend the night with us. He slept in Tommys bed. I boiled the bedding. He was OK; but we were so scared of him. Thel never brought another one home.
Later a man working at General Dynamics, come to Thel, "Don't you remember me?" Thel had met the man and his father at the Union Gospel Mission. He had helped them get work, he wanted to thank him, again.
Richard had an good old bicycle that we had sanded and painted. He was riding it on the sidewalk, in front of our house. A woman driver, she missed the trees and run up over the bicycle--- that Richard had jumped off of. Her insurance man called, trying to set up an appointment, about the price of the bicycle--with Richard. It didn't take Thel long to tell the man that he, Thel, owned that bicycle. Deal with him, not the kid.
About that time, I had a lot of stomach ache. The Doctor found a tumor and I had a histerectomy. We already had our three sons. I have never had any problems.
Wilma and Henry didn’t live far. Fay Dean and Needy were playing outside their house about dark, with Tommy and Richard. A big girl that they knew, come walking down the street. Needy remembers “We jumped out and hollered, “Boo.” The girl started cussing us. There stood three year old Richard!
''I clamped my hands over his ears, so that he wouldn’t hear those bad words.”
Sepulvedas lived two doors up, so very nice. They were the first Mexicans that we ever knew. Christmass come and Becky, Tommys age, come bringing Tommy a nicely wrapped gift of a little truck, he liked it. She just stood there and then she asked, "Where is my Christmass present?" Tommy had told her that if she would give him a present--he would give her one. He 'forgot' to tell me. I went and bought her a gift.
Richard liked to walk home from school for lunch. He loved fresh corn tortilas. Whatever leftovers that we had- he rolled them in a tortilia. Or I could scramble him an egg, to roll up. He walked through the alleys, admiring the flowers. One day he come home with a nice sized clump of pretty blue iris that a lady gave him, to set in our yard.
He asked why I went to every one of their class programs and room mother activities. "None of the other Mothers did."
Richard showed musical ability. He was in the school band. He took piano lessons from a lady around the corner. She had two daughters, about his age. He was going to town with them, in their car. He stood outside waiting for them. There was a big stalk of garlic in our flower bed. He broke off a long leaf and chewed on it. Later she told me that they rolled all their windows down and were nearly sick. He couldn't understand why.
She thought he had talent. She told him that he could be a 'concery pianist' by the time that he was 21. He quit practicing and never took another lesson. He reasoned that he was eleven years old. And would have to practice and play, for as long as he had lived already and he was not going to do it. Sometimes I run across the music that he wrote for two songs. 'The Dead fly' and 'My Brother the Rat.' I never saw the words.
Dusty, 'Dustin' Payne lived up the street with his Gramaw. When it got cloudy, he run home. She was in a tornado once and they got ready to crawl under the bed.
The boys were in Boy Scouts together. I took a carload of them to Mama Gills, in Mineral Wells, many times, Stan Don too. Mama Gill liked it to. She ate crawdad tails and hot dogs with them.
Two little girls asked our good neighbor if she was 'mean or nice.' She couldn't understand them. "No I'm not Menonite, I am Methodist." They thought the neighbor between them was 'mean' because he put some gravel on the sidewalk and they couldn't roll their tricycle or skates along. Someone called the police and he was told not to.
I ironed for a neighbor, she didn't put any starch in her clothes and spray starch hadn't been invented. They didn't look much better, that didn't last long.
Benny walked three blocks to tiny Jacks Drug Store and got him a job. He dropped the hamburger patty on the floor and Jack took the price of the whole hamburger out of his pay. Years later, Benny said that about once a week, Jacks Mother come up there and cooked her up some cocaine. Me and Thel never did go in that store.
2014, I asked Tommy if he remembered when his Daddy busted our black and white Bendix TV. He did and I asked him if it was because they were looking at it to much- or he didn't like what they were watching. We had never talked about it. Tommy said that he thought that he had listened to one of those radical preachers; preaching against TV. (Benny was 'preached on', when he come to church with one of the first 'flat top' haircuts. Anything 'new' some preacher was always against it. Benny took a new girl to church. She had a big new purse. He made her leave it in the car. Benny was afraid that the preacher would single them out- over that beautifull purse- and embarrass them)
It ended up good. Between our house and the neighbors, was a five foot high chain link fence. I saw Tommy laying on the top of that fence. He had no ladder or boards. I couldn't see how he could have got up there or how he could lay up there. He was about as skinney as the fence. He was looking over into our neighbors window--watching their TV. I called his Daddy to come and look at him. Nothing was said. Thel went and bought us a new color TV, they had just come out. I still have the thick glass off the front of the old black and white one, 18X23 inches.
Hills Grocery had fryers for 25cents a pound. I cut them up and and spread them in a black bread pan. I poured BBQ sauce on them. In the oven about an hour and the boys thought they were wonderfull. They kept asking for them, after Thel and I got tired of them. They were so cheap and they liked them, they called me Mexican Mama Meia.
Thel bought pretty new stylish metal kitchen cabinets, for our house on Gould.
It was just before Richard was born. The sinks were all built in. I remember being startled when a pan would bump on the sink and me leaning against it. Richard in my stomach-- would jump. I was real careful not to bump things.
Stanley had bought a house and two acres in Azle. Thel decided that we ought to move out of town. We bought four acres, near them. We bought a big old four bedroom duplex and had it moved onto the land. Thel removed the wall between the kitchens, and it was nice and big. He removed the wall between the living rooms and it was bigger.
Benjamin was at our house in Azle, and we drove to Euless to get Randy to spend a few days. On the way home we stopped to buy a loaf of bread at a big grocery. They went in with me. A clerk was handing out tiny cup samples of buttermilk. I took one, Benjamin knew that he didn't want any. Randy asked for a cup full. I reminded him that Benjamin hadn't wanted any. Randy still wanted some. He took a taste and said, "Whew, it tastes like puke." The clerk got tickled and I got them out of there.
The boys had 'Greenie' in a screen box that they made, on the back porch. He wasn't three feet long. He disappeared out of his cage. I always thought that we would find his long skeleton under the big long deep freeze, when we moved, we didn't.
Thel got a cow and two calves and then got sick of milking. He raised rabbits for a while. They multiplied, seemingly faster than he could skin them, 26 the last time. He got a pony for Richard. Then a mare, that had a pretty little colt, another ‘Lone Star,' like my Daddy had at Breckenridge. He raised 2 or 3 or 4 calves, for us to eat. Then a pretty little pony, Ginger. He sold it to Stanley Don.
Tommy was a Junior in Technical High school in Fort Worth, he wanted to be a machinist, like Thel was then. We paid tuition for him to drive back to school there. Tommy got to going to church at North Side Assembly of God, in Fort Worth—-------
every night, he would not stop.
In Senior English, each night the class was to read a chapter in the book, 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' They were to discuss that chapter in class, the next day.
Tommy did not have time to read it, and he thought it was a disgusting book. I read the chapter for him and told him the main points, as he dressed, the next morning. He did not want to be a machinist any more. Tommy graduated.
I was at our bank on North Main street. A small three car motorcade come by.
It was John F Kennedy and he was comming into town from the airport. He was easy to recognize,with his wide grin and thick head of hair. The sun glinted on his hair, and it had a red gleam! It seemed like a gift- that I had got to see him. I could draw you a picture, even now.
Benny married Sharon Goza, Gina was six months old, a beautifull doll. Four months before Benjamin was born, they were at our house for dinner. John F. Kennedy made a speech from a hotel balcony in Fort Worth, at 10 AM. Thel was there.
The union had strongly recomended that union members should be there 'to make a showing, in the number of people who come out to listen to him'.We were not interested in what he would have to say. We had not voted for him for President.
We did not like his accent or that he was Catholic, or his Fathers business, alcohol.
After we ate dinner, Sharon was ironing and watching 'As the World Turns', on TV. Walter Cronkite broke in and said that Kennedy had been shot and killed. We were shocked and saddened; that could have happened to our President, in our town.
Thel had thought about there being a shooting; as he had been standing about 15 feet down from him,as he made his last speech,from the balcony in down town FortWorth
Benjamin and Gina loved to come and see us, a lot. Sharon once asked Ida if Thel and I thought that Gina was Benny's own child. “No, we just loved her.”
Dee and Linda Arrington were their good friends. He had cancer.
Sharon got to worrying that she didn't know her real Mother in California. She flew out to see her, taking Benjamin and Gina. Dee died and she flew back here.
Mothers Day was the next week, they come to see us. They were dressed like dolls and they brought me a real nice straw purse.
Tommy graduated and he wanted an 'outing.' He had three church friends, one of them had a hard cast up to his hip. He borrowed Stanley's little jon boat, no motor.
They brought it on our trailer, to Greer Island, on the north end of Lake Worth. They paddled a while and it got dark. They got turned around. They turned the boat over their friend and left him the flashlight. They started wading out and got ten feet from him; and couldn't see his flashlight. They went back and stayed with him.
Richard had wanted to go with them, 'there wasn't room'. He always said that if he had been along, they wouldn't have been lost. Typical little brother.
Thel and Stanley found their pick up and where they had launched. They honked and yelled, no answer. Thel called Benny, to help look. I told him not to tell Sharon. The sheriff said that he would have a helicopter search for them, when it got light. I had to call the parents and tell them. One Mother asked if we were scared. "Well, not really."
It started getting daylight and Tommy got his directions straight. They were all soon home, all right and no helicopter needed.
I called Benny and told him that he could tell Sharon. He told me that she had taken Benjamin and Gina and flew back to California, the day after Mothers Day.
We were shocked.
Linda Aarington took them to the airport, she said that if she hadn't took her, she would have found someone else to. Sharon called Benny and told him that they were leaving; just before they took off. She said she knew that he would have stopped her, if
he could have reached her in time.
The next year Sharon called Benny and told him that Benjamin and Gina could come back for the summer if he would pay their fares.---He did. He went to work the next morning. I come in and grabbed them in his big bed, on Field Street. We were happy, Thel was too, when we all got to Azle.
Gina's 'real father' had never paid any child support. The courts in California were going to make him start paying; and all the back support too. He called Sharon in California and told her, that as he would be paying support; he thought he ought to get to know Gina, Sharon agreed. We met them at the Weatherford traffic circle. Gina didn't remember seeing him before, but she was happy to be with her 'real Dad'. We called her on the telephone and she seemed fine.
Before long, Sharon called Gina and told her that she had a new baby brother, named Guy. Gina didn't seem very interested. She told her Mother that she had decided to live with her real Dad and she had already started to school.
Sharon and Dennis left the new baby, who was nine days old, with good friends and flew to Fort Worth. Linda Arrington took them to her house. Sharon started hemoraging and they took her to Peter Smith Hospital and left her there. She was getting blood in both arms, six pints in all, before they got it stopped.
Linda Aarington took her car and she and Dennis drove the streets of Everman, looking for Gina. They told school kids that they were looking for a stolen red bicycle.
They found Gina walking home from school, alone. Linda watched carefully as she run to Dennis and asked about her Mother and new baby brother. She wanted to go and see her. After seeing Sharon at the hospital, Linda drove them to the big DFW airport and Dennis and Gina got on the very next big airplane that was flying west.
Sharon called Benny and he called Thel. Thel was having a water well drilled, by our house in Azle. Our yard was full of big trucks, and a croud of kids watching.
The Chief of Police in Azle drove up. He told Thel that Gina had been kidnapped by two men, one of them with long hair. Linda was wearing pants, kinda unusual then.
Benjamin had run up to listen, he grabbed Thel's leg and started crying.
I hugged him away and told him that Gina was with Dennis, on their way to California.
Thel told the Police Chief that it was a custody battle. "The man that reported it; he was Gina's Father, but that he had never paid any child support and was trying to get out of paying any. That Gina was, right then; on a plane flying to California." The Chief of Police parked up the street and watched our house.
(Jimmy Don paid $10 child support, the day that they got divorced, he never paid again.)
All the time, Sharon had court papers in her purse; that she had sole custody of Gina. Sharon flew home to California in a few days.
Linda was dating a Fort Worth policeman. He told her that she had did a very risky thing. Linda has never married again, 2013.
Debby says that Benjamin has blank spaces in his childhood memories.
Gina says thoughtfully “ 'Daddy Ben' was my best Daddy” We love her.
Benjamin remembers eight years later, when his whole family come by car from California. I asked him how they got here. He grimaced and said, "We filled up the tank with gas seven times and just kept driving." He had always flew before.
Guy was eight, blond, so handsome, just like Benjamin. At Azle we had a good big garden, as always. Guy had never seen a garden or anything growing. He was exited to see tomatoes and beans growing. He examined and tasted it all raw, and he remembers it.
Benjamin was in Junior High School in California. The school contacted his Mother and told her that he hadn't been in school lately. She called Benny and Benjamin flew to Fort Worth. Sharon picked him up at the airport and stopped and bought him a really nice winter coat. It was cold winter time and he didn't have one, in California.
It was camel color, Benjamine was so proud of it, he wore it the next winter too.
Benny was in Cuba with Bob Hood. They filmed several episodes for his TV fishimg show. Benny brought back a big fish that he had caught, and had it mounted.
Benjamin did well in school, but he got kicked off the school bus for a week.
He and some friends had all spit on the ground. They dragged another boy, by his feet, through it. It was to far for him to walk to school. I drove him to school several days.
He loved to play any kind of the pin ball machines. We considered it such a big waste of time and money. The summer of 1880 was record hot. He had a job in a warehouse. I couldn't see how he could stand it, but he worked every day .
He graduated from Boswell High School. His Mother flew from California to watch him. Sharon bought a new car and gave her Monte Carlo to Benjamin, for graduation. He and his Mother drove it back to California.
In a couple of years he called Thel and wanted to come and stay with us, in Azle. He said his long haired friend had changed to Hari Karishna religion and was about to drive him crazy. He came to us and we loved him. After a few jobs, Benjamin went back to California and got on at Hewlet Packard. He had to get special permission; because his Mother worked there too. Those years of playing pin ball, it paid off.
He has no college, no degree, but he is 'well thought of' in the company.
He studied Chinese, learned it well. He flies and works there a lot. He married Amy, she was nice.It lasted several years, cultural differences are so shocking and hard to live with.
He still talks to her on the phone, He has more flying hours with United than nearly anyone else. The Pilot walks back and recognizes him for that, every time he flies.
Gina had no more contact with her Father, for years. She had only a tiny picture, she couldn't remember what he looked like, she worried about it. I wrote him that she was a sweet girl and none of the early problems were her fault. He sent her pictures, he has a later daughter that was born on Gina's birthday. She has visited him in Everman, taking Christina—Briana Samamtha---Emily and Abby Bobby---Dameon Michael---Dakota, her four good looking children.
Tommy went to Assembly of God College, in Waxahachie.
The first summer, him and his roommate, James Dodd, went to Lawrence’s Church at Webber Falls and held a revival, then held over another week. (Now they are both missionaries in Belize.) That threw him to be to late to get a job that summer.
Tommy was number 9 on the draft list for the Viet Nam war. His Missions teacher got a college deferment for the whole class.
The Northside Assembly of God sent him as a ‘missionary intern’ to Kenya in Africa for the next two summers. He spent one night with a native family. The altitude was cold. He woke up and there was a chicken snuggled at his feet. He got back to the missionary family and showed them some 'bites.' They laughed and told him that it was bedbugs. He come home with mononucleosis, using a cane. So Tommy could not work and save money to pay for college. He did not want to borrow money. He said that he could not make enough, preaching, to pay it back.
He took every job that he could get. Thursday after noons, he worked at a cattle auction. Driving stock through the chutes, a cow butted his leg. He almost got a bad infection, his college insurance wouldn’t have coverd it. For a while he did carpenter work for L. W. Dollar, a local pastor that also built houses. After that, there was an opening at the loading docks at the large Sears warehouse in Dallas on the night shift.
It was real heavy lifting.
One Christmas Tommy got a job that he heard about in colledge. He spent three rough, dangerous weeks working on a tug boat. It was south of New Orleans on the Miss. River, it brought supplies to five off-shore oil rigs. They lowered 6 or 7 inch ropes for them to tie onto the rig. The wind was so strong that the ropes broke. They had to anchor until the wind let up. Then they tied on and the hoses were lowered for fuel. Tommy said he would stuff his pillow under the edge of his matress, to keep from rolling off into the floor. The next morning they would wake up calm. He said that he would never let his son's work at a job like that.
2014, Tommy flew to Florida. He flew high over Louisiana and could look down at the area where he was-- in the tug boat. It was like looking at a map.
The first job that I worked, to pay for Tommys College- was for a lady who had tiny twin boys. I gave them their first baths. They grew nicely. James bullied Lee, untill he learned to bite him. Lee would laugh and bare his teeth and chase James, who would toddle away, screaming. It was almost funny, to see him get paid back.
Then I was housekeeper for several other families. They all ended up as being my good friends. Mama worried, “Peoples houses must be awful dirty, if they pay someone to clean them.” I told her, “I never did find one- any worse than my own.”
Thel did not like it when I worked.
I sewed all the boys and Thel's pajamas and shirts till they were in Jr High school. No one wore knit T shirts then. I always 'made a big garden' and canned a lot.
Thel worked all the overtime that he could get. We never had a new car, he worked on them a lot. And took good care of them too. 2016, I drive a 20 year old Oldsmobile that looks new to me. It has 106,000 miles on it.
Richards first girl was a Marcum at the North Side Assembly of God. He liked to talk to her on the phone. It didn’t cost much, but after the phone bill come, I sent him in the car to the pay phone, a half mile down the road, toward Fort Worth. He could talk as long as he wanted to--for a nickel. (We went to her funeral, she died of cancer, at 48)
Richard caused trouble for his self, by getting a first date with a very popular girl down the street from us. Her father was a pilot at GD. He flew the B 58 that crashed.
Richard was bullied by bigger boys. Thel went to school and talked to them about it.
Later Richard told this, Thel never knew it.
The PE teacher and the whole class was setting down resting, after running. The teacher loudly asked Richard, "Say Kid, has anybody been bothering you lately?" Richard said "No," and joined the U S Marines. He has never went back and visited that school.
Benny had good jobs in sheet metal buildings. He had his own company, erecting
new filling stations. He had trouble with a union. They told him that the owner could not be a worker. Benny was sore and 'running the unions down'. Thel told him to remember that all the food that he had eaten, for the last 25 years, had come from a union paycheck.
Then Benny was President of Little Dude Boat trailer Company.
(1/3 owner—bought out of bankruptcy). It struggled in the bad economy.
The last money that he borrowed, it was 25% interest. Gas was rationed.
You could only buy it on odd or even days, depending on your car license number.
No one would buy a boat or trailer because of no gas and the high interest rate.
The president ‘bailed out’ Chrysler, (loaned them $10 million)
Benny wondered why he didn’t help Little Dude too.
When it ‘went under,' 23+ marinas around Texas owed Little Dude $600,000.00
We had a garden, the soil was sandy, over clay. It raised anything. When Thel dug up a sweet potato, that weighed seven and a half pounds, I called the newspaper and he had his picture in the paper with it. And later there was a five pound turnip.
He bought a John Deer tractor to mow the four acres. All you grandkids loved that tractor, we still have it. (Richard wants it, to set in his front yard) Thel bought a Troy-Built tiller and we grew wonderful things, in our half acre garden.
Thel was scattering hay over the garden and disturbed a hornet nest. One of them come like a bullet and stung him on the nose. It was a terrible big pain. His nose didn't swell as big as he thought that it felt. I watched as he had that tractor in high gear, running from the bees. He had his hat off, whooping it, first one side and then the other. He was fightin' off the bees. He looked like he was 'fanning' a bucking horse. He had a well drilled and we watered a lot. He planted Choctaw pecan trees and later apple trees. He drove to Oklahoma and got them from Rondal.
Richard was a helicopter electrician in the Marines. During the evacuation of Viet Nam, he operated off the ‘flat top’ Hancock. It was the oldest carrier, left over from WW 2. It was anchored 60 miles from shore. People were desperate to get out of the country. Any military man in Viet Nam that could get his hands on a helicopter, put all his family on it and flew to safety. Helicopters were circling, waiting to land, on the ship. Only lives were saved. As soon as the helicopter landed and the passengers jumped off, the Hancock had a kind of fire-truck-bulldozer, that pushed the helicopter overboard.
Richard saw 100’s pushed over. More helicopters landed, as fast as the deck was cleared.
Richard was crew on a big helicopter, C H 53 C Stallion, the largest cargo or personnel carrier. They flew to parks and airbases where U S Marine crews were screening the Vietnamese, who had the papers to be evacuated. They packed into the helicopter, sometimes 100. There were 48 big helicopters, 54 medium and more smaller ones that could land at the Embassy. They flew the refugees to smaller boats that were circling to pick up the people, who were lucky enough to be evacuated. The smaller boats run out of room, then they put them on the carriers. The Hancock was already stuffed full. It started out orderly at 4am, it grew to a madhouse by 4pm. They could not keep the mobs back, from rushing the helicopters. Richard flew 27 hours straight.
Many of the people knew that they would not live if they didn’t get out on the helicopter. Richard knows a man in Ok. City who tried to get out that night. He spent over 7 years in a Viet Cong work camp. He finally got out, because some of his family got to the United States and sent back money 'to buy him out.'
That is still the third biggest way that the Viet Nam government gets their money.
Shirley works with a lady whose daughter-in-law was evacuated to the Hancock. They visited and the daughter-in-law said that her uncle was in the South Vietnamese Army. He flew a Cobra helicopter that the United States had provided to them. He took it to save his family, eleven of them. That helicopter was built to carry two people and amunition. The girl was eleven, she sat in someones lap. [Now she is a physicist working for the US goverment, her husband is working for the U S weather dept, a physicist dealing with weather in outer space]. Eight people were hanging onto the outside of that small helicopter!
They went to boat after boat and were waved off, they were all full of refuges. The Cobra was running out of fuel and flying low, touching the waves.
The Hancock waved them off, but he kept coming, the deck hands scattered.
He barely lifted it up over the edge of the deck and crashed onto the deck! The rotor blades hit the deck, throwing showers of sparks. People went rolling!
Within two minutes, that helicopter was pushed off into the water and another landed.
The Hancock did not have food or restrooms to handle that many, it was a mess. It was over two years, Richard remembered, before they got all the refugees off the Hancock.
Daddy’s health got bad. Stanley oversaw a house built for them, on Polly Ave. They were in a nursing home ten months and Daddy died. Mama fell and broke her hip at home and was in nursing homes for the next 25 years, so many health problems, of getting around. She saw the activity director write down the names of those who participated in the activities. She thought she was helping the activity director by participating. By staying active, it helped her health.
Mama took very little medicine. She said that when she took an asperin; she could feel when the pain relief 'took over". And she could feel when the medicine in the asperin, 'quit working' and the pain 'come back'. She never was quite able to live with us. She was smiling and pleasant, and lived to be 102. Her mind was good and she told all the stories of her family, for youall.
I fried lots of okra for you, when we flew you back from California, every summer. Benjamin, remember Arnold, that you kept in the house? He was just like a puppy, wasn’t five inches high. You held onto his tail so that he couldn’t run, while I took your picture. The only noise that he made was a squeal when he got caught in a tight place or a contented grunt. Thel couldn’t stand it, that we had a pig in the house.
As soon as Benjamin left that summer, Thel gave that pig away. Hanner, Mamas brother come to visit from Mineral Wells. He went home with a pig to be fattened.
Mr Springfield's brother raised hogs. One of his brood sows gave birth to more pigs then she had fawsets to feed them.They gave us the tiny pig.
The mini-bikes, I think that all you, Holms and Daugherty boys, had one. You come tearing around the corner of our garage and 'wiped out'--bad. Mr Springfield come running out. He was consoling you, "You'll be riding it again, by tomorrow."
` You were riding it in three hours. The big snow and the igloo that you built, your picture in the paper and the Dougherity and Holms boys. There was lots of fun in Azle.
Thel got tired of mowing all that 5 acres, that we didn’t use. I would pick okra, tomatoes, beans, corn, everything and take it to people. Thel didn’t like it, that they wouldn’t come and get it, much less pick it.
Thel got to going to the advertisements—to buy a lot on the lake, just any lake. We drove to Granbury and looked, that lot was so far, that you couldn’t even see the water. When we got home, Mr Springfield, next door, told us that there was a vacant lot next to their son Bruce’s, Granbury lake house. He brought us to see it. Thel wrote a check for $10,000 and he said that it was ‘cheap’. I said, “Nothing is cheap that costs $10,000”, (tax value of the lot in 2011, is $85,000). It has a good view across the lake,
that is on the Brazos River. Our lot is on a natural slue, an old short creek.
The lot was covered with grassburs and bull nettles, pecan trees all around.
We mowed it and were happy to have ‘our own water’. There is shallow water at our edge, for our grandkids to play in. (Ryan, 2011, “Grama, you and Granpa couldn't have lived in a better place) Thel went and talked to the Brazos River Authority and they showed him that a house on our lot would never flood. Water will go over the dam first. We set our cab-over camper on the lot and gradually poured a pier and beam foundation, and put the plumbing in and built a sub floor over it. 30X40 ft.
We never ate out. I always brought food from home.
As Mama said,"When you were raised during the depression---you are as afraid of debt---as a rattlesnake." Thel always paid cash for all the building materials.
He bought everything he could, at two salvage lumber places.
Benny had a big trailer that we used and we would come early and stay late. He kinda used the same plan as the house that Wilma bought in Azle. All three of the houses that we built, were from plans that he drew his self. We never borrowed money to build any of them. We did have a morgage on the first home that we bought for $18,000.
Thel had built a 24 X 32 garage with cement floor in Azle.
He once put his Volkswagen and two other cars in it.
He built a travel trailer inside that garage. It was nice, had a bath and cook stove too. He had to drag it outside, before he could put the tires on it. He sold it before we ever used it. A woman wanted it to just live in, by herself.
In that garage, he built the walls and studs for the house, here on the lake.
He measured and numbered them and had them all stacked in our garage in Azle.
One Sunday morning, Junior met us here at the lake. Thel brought all the walls at one time. He and I had loaded them onto Benny’s big trailer. Mr. Springfield and Bruce didn’t think it would work. They just knew that we would need a lot of help, so they showed up, unexpected by us. They couldn't believe that all those 2x4s and framing; would all fit. There was no problem.
They were surprised when it was set up on the sub -floor, nailed and braced in four hours.
I always brought our food to eat. We never bought a hamburger, even.
Thel helped Junior on his house in Euless. Junior was working at the fire department and the men were nailing the plywood sheeting on the roof. In a hurry and having a big time, they were missing the rafters with the nails. Thel told them to go back and nail into the rafters. They asked him-if he had the authority to tell them that.
He told them to 'try him'. They didn't, they went back and nailed it right.
Junior had some medical training as a fireman. He was on duty as a big plane landed, they radioed that a passenger had passed out. Junior and another fireman rushed onto the plane. The man was laying on the floor. Junior hit him hard in the chest.
The other fireman said, "H--- Moore, if he's not already dead, you killed him." The man recovered and there was a big ceremony with the man's relatives, commending Junior.
On his days off, sometimes Junior painted houses. He would use a roller to get the paint on. Then he would grab a paint brush and brush over it. He could nearly finish a small house in one day. He always had 'something lined up to do', on his 'days off'.
Once his big airport fire department was called to a small airplane crash. It was a mile from the airport. When they got there, a local small city fire department was there. They were putting water on that airplane gasoline fire. They had to stop them.
Tommy and Ryan come to help, on our house later. Thel had built all the rafters and trusses, at Azle. We brought them down in the big trailer. Tommy straddled the walls and did lots of nailing. Ryan 5, was proud to wear a nail apron and help. It hurt his head and his dignity when he backed into the hole in the sub floor, that we left to go underneath. It was two bedrooms and bathrooms. The living room and kitchen are big and open. I have never put curtains on the front windows, just the tilting blinds.
We had two good plum trees in Azle. Thel used their pulp to make real sour jam. Ryan loved it, Thel sent him home with two big jars. Cell phones had just come out. Ryan called his Dad in a preachers meeting, to ask where his jam had been put. When Tommy got home, he told Ryan that he wasn't to be called out of a meeting except for something important. Ryan assured him, "That jelly was real important."
Dora, my fat cousin, (that’s what she called herself) and Burl wanted to help us, ‘do something hard’. She could easily loose weight, then gain it back just as quick. She tried all the diet plans. She could 'win', by loosing quicker than anyone else. One 'well known' diet plan, ---they paid her-- to not tell anyone that she had ever used their plan.
Pee-Wee and Half-Pint was what they called theirselves. Burl had reumatic fever as a child and was of small build. Their son, Hugh Garland had it too, and died young.
Burl often said, “Every woman needs a good strapping, at least every three months.” We all laughed, he never weighed 100 pounds. Burl was so soft spoken. Anyone disagree with him, he might say,"Better watch out, I am kin to Jessie James."
They come from Breckenridge and we put up sheetrock on the ceiling. They would get it, just right, on the ‘lift’ that Thel had made—push it up in place, and Dora would say, “Let me get all my big fat, pushing up on it.” She would stand there, until Thel and Burl had that big sheet nailed up onto the ceiling.
We would be so tired and drive back to Azle to spend the night, and me and Dora would pick tomatoes and can them. We had a ‘bumper crop.’ Dora said that she could use a lot of them. Each evening we would put up about 15 quarts for her.
Thel had the commode in, we were so glad. He was kinda peeved when everyone planned to come here at the lake, for Mamas 83rd birthday. All the Mineral Wells and Breckenridge folks come, they all wanted to see our ‘place on the lake’. They all brought food. There were no cabinets, only folding chairs. Richard and Shirley put a quilt on the sub floor in the back corner of the kitchen for baby Alicia.
Well it was a ‘house warming’ for us, on top of Mamas birthday! Dora and Burl made beautiful prize winning clocks, out of wood. Mama wanted one that they had made of a big, angle cut oak limb, about 6+18, there was three, just alike. She asked, "Would it be stealing, if I laid down a $20 bill and walked off with that clock?" They gave it to her.
The prettiest were made out of irregular slabs of cypress root wood. We had been visiting their home in Breckenridge, and they had several hanging on their wall. They asked Thel which one that he thought was the prettiest, they insisted. Thel said, “Oh well, I never could get one of them anyway.” He pointed out a big one out that has a mirror moon, reflecting the pendulum.
They come to our party----bringing us that beautiful clock! We have always been so proud of it. At the housewarming, Julia and Nathaniel got to eating red Jello in front of where the couch is now. There is a great big red smear---on the sub floor. I always have them red Jello when they come. Such good sweet, memories.
Thel built all the cabinets, for the kitchen and bathrooms, in the garage in Azle. They fit right where he planned them. I put clear varnish on them, I’m so proud of them.
We visited Lee in California, Trumon went along. We had told him about Grand Canyon. He scoffed, 'Somebody just took a bulldozier and dug a big ditch'. I think of what he said--every time I see 'that big ditch'.
And he said the Carlsbad caverns, was just a big 'hole in the ground'. He was surprised.
Lee said, “Thel, I hear that you are building a shack on the lake.” Truman said, “Lee, it is bigger than 'your' house.” One morning we were all at Lee's. Ima Riea, back in Porum, thought she would telephone her Dad. She forgot about the time difference. "Dad, how are you doing?" "Well I'm trying to sleep." It was four o'clock in the morning.
There were no motorhomes yet. They were working with their pickups and campers. Lee was having trouble keeping his 'back battery' up. Thel told him that he needed an 'inverter' between his front battery and his back one. Lee said, “H--- Thel, they haven't invented such a thing yet.”
Thel told him that him and Junior both had one on their campers. Lee wired the big banks and dams in California, he knew electricity. Lee couldn't believe that his younger brothers could know —anything--- especially about electricity.---that he didn't.
Thel built bunk beds just back of the cab, inside our camper shell. Tommy and Richard slept there. Along the sides, he built beds for him and I. We had an ice chest that we could pull out, and a Coleman stove to pull out and set on the tailgate and cook on. We were on top of the world. Then he bought a 5th wheel, and that was good, but it was a chore; for him to level and hook up.
He bought a cab-over motor home and drove it to Richards in Oklahoma City. Thel went out in it, to shave, and Rickey went with him. Rickey was just big enough to open every drawer and just look. He kept looking up--Thel asked if he wanted to look in all the little doors up there. Rickey nodded. Thel held him and he looked in everything.
Thel asked him what he was looking for. "Something sweet and delicious."
After that, most every day, Thel would want , 'Something sweet and delicious.'
When we had company at Azle, they always wanted to come to Granbury Lake. So Thel sold everything at Azle and we are here.
Our wedding Anniversery is December 27. We celebrated our 50th in the summer time.The kids all played in our shallow water. A big happy bunch of friends.
Right after that, Tommy moved his family to Mont Belview. It was good, Ryan found his good wife Laci there.
Ryan was about 10 and he and his Dad were on the big Wymerainer tree lands in eastern Oklahoma. Ryan got to drive their little Datsun pick up, using the stick shift. He was so happy, to drive freely on their dirt roads. "Dad I was just born to drive."
So I don't worry so much- when he drives to get me for a big time with them in Arlington. And then have to drive on to Mt Belview or back to Springfield.
Thaniel was in high school and liked to cheer their teams on. He and 7 friends, for their final high school game- they painted their blue jeans, body, bright blue. Face, hair and all! That was their school color. Their next game was in the play-off. They got permission and hired a limozene to drive out onto the big football field- They all jumped out-Blue- waving and yelling wildly. It's to bad that their team didn't go on to State.
Thaniel was a good pole valter, I've got a picture to prove it! And I say that I don't worry when he gets face to face with a marmot on a cliff or cave somewhere. Now he's a Rock Climbing Chaplin, with a motorhome of his own. Ninja Warrior!! what next.
We bought a bigger motor home and visited relatives. We never just went on vacation.
Rickey and Alicea loved to play in the water and stay with us. Stephanie McVay, up the slew, She became a good friend. With their babies now, they are still best friends. Talking about a 'arranged wedding'. She has a beautiful dau. They run and played in the shallow water. The ducks were always close. They played with a plastic, life size, duck decoy; that floated up. I tied a string on it and a half brick to anchor it from floating away. Thel caught a live duck, they touched it, "Grama!, It's soft, it's got feathers!"
We visited in Ok City and went to a big basketball game with Rickey and Alecia in it. Thel yelled for them. He looked at Richard , "Why aren't you yelling?"
Richard said, "Because the reff told me that I would have to leave if I didn't quiten down"
Our grand kids have all learned to ski, we still have the short skis that our sons learned on. Ricky can jump higher than his Dad ever could.
Rickey come in from Irac on Christmas, 2008? It was cold, he wanted to ski, bad.
It had been over a year! His Dad had the motor on the big boat running. Rickey set on the dry dock, holding the ski rope, with his ski's on. Richard took off in the boat and Rickey held on. He stood up on the water, and followed behind him. Pretty as you please! Oh we cheered!! it was cold. He just intended to ski one big round, it was cold.
He waved his Dad on around, one more time! Richard made a whirl past the dock and Rickey turned loose of the rope and swung over and glided on his skis. He set down on the dock, where he started off from! Shirley was taking pictures, they were all good. We cheered. Rickey got wet from his jumping and spray. He did not get down into the water. He had been dreaming about doing that--. In Irac a little girl come up and put a flower in his hand. Another one threw a rock at him.
Another time, Thaniel wanted to ski, I told them to take 'the little green boat.' The big boat wouldn't run good. I assured them that we had tested that little boat out in the water at Lake Texhoma, and it was safe and would not sink. He skied fast and good. Tommy made a fast wide turn. Thaniel had a long rope and he made a wide turn -in the other direction. All that pressure; nylon ropes are strong. It flipped that light aluminum boat- upside down! Tommy come up beside the boat. Where was Kathi? She bobbed out from under the boat. It floated, it did not sink. We are so thankful that they were not hurt.
They tried to drag the boat and couldn't, the battery was dangling like an anchor. A lady watched them and called a Park Ranger. They hadn't done anything illegal. He drove them, soaking wet, here to our house. They went back and got Thaniel and the boat. Like I said, "It did not sink." The battery come loose and it was lost. The motor was hot and when it got a big gulp of that lake water, it cracked, Thel got a new one, it probably hasn't been used 10 hours. Richard will find time to get it running, some of these times. Kathi lost her sun glasses. We were so thankful that we hadn't lost Kathi!!
Zach, our oldest Great Grand Son was real little, early one morning he toddled to the window and looked out at the lake. He saw the ducks, gliding on the water. “How do they do that, How dey do dat?” He had seen remote controls guiding things but he could not see any one guiding the ducks.
Zach was about six and we were all eating at Richard and Shirleys home in Luther. The table was crouded and Shirley had spread a big towel for Rickey and Zack to set on and eat on the floor beside us. Shirley handed each of us a pretty paper napkin. Zack's had a torn edge and he handed it back to her and asked 'please' for another napkin. Stephayne said, "No, there's nothing wrong with that one, you take it and use it." He looked down and said nothing. In a minute, Rickey slowly eased his own napkin over toward Zack. Stephayne saw him and stopped that.
That may be why Zack is so nice and polite now.
He learned to ski. Next summer, he's getting married. 2012---- next spring 2014, he and Meganne will have a son, a Great Great one! Everett Lane is here now! "He's blond; to pretty to be a boy, as my Mama would say" Time goes on. Now baby Anne. 2017, Zack asked if he could take two of the fishing rods on our back porch. So that he and Everett could use them to fish in the lake; back of their house in East Texas. I said "Sure".
It seems not so long ago that I asked Thel to build me a quilting frame, the size for me to make a baby quilt on. To make a baby quilt for our first grandchild. All of our grandchildren and now the Great Greats! I love you all! Turman's three grandsons, too. 20; if I've counted right. Now one for Benjamins second granddaughter, Brooklin!, due later this year. 2015 2017 We are waiting for 'Bently', to be born in July, My 32 !!
Richard, our youngest, said, “I may mess up in some things. But me and Shirley sure do raise good kids, Stephayne, Alicia and Ricky.”
2010, Ryan, playing with Linsey Grace, in our shallow water,
“Gramma, you and Granpa couldn't have lived in a better place!”
Lynzi's Grace's first big game of soccer- She took the ball down the field-for a score, such loud yelling; no wonder----- She scored for the wrong team.
She learned to brush her teeth, if no one was there to help her reach the water--she swished her toothbrush in the comode.
Ashers nose specialist pulled out the sixth piece of foam, that was stuck up in his nose. Asher giggled and said, "That tickles, do it again." He was about six.
The asphalt shingle roofs on the new house on North Houston, the new house in River Oaks, the old house on Gould, the big house in Azle and this house on the lake—Thel did not hire anyone to help him do the shingling. Thel did all the electrical and plumbing, everything, everywhere. He always took pride in his work, he did everything 'right', he was a machinist. And he never took off from Convair to do any of it. He worked the second and third shift sometimes, so he could have daylight to do his own building. Richard said that "Every board and sheet of plywood and shingle bundle--Mama was on the other end of it.
Since we have lived here, on the lake, we attached a garage, with a cement floor. We have built a separate workshop and added to it twice, cement floors. We built our own dock, drove down our own piers and later made it four foot longer. Poured us a launch ramp and retaining wall. We poured a 10X40 slab for a patio, it was all open.
Thel framed it in for windows, clear to the ceiling. The neighbor watched our progress. He come in from work one evening and there was eleven big-pane windows and two glass doors, all sealing in that patio.
He asked Thel, “Who could you get--to come and put all that glass up—in just one day?”
The next spring we poured another 10X40 slab and it just has a roof over it. Mama said, “You just needed to pour, two more times and you will be in the lake.” Whenever Mama thought we were ‘going overboard’ she would try to not tell us.
She would say, “You two deserve the best.”
Lloyd, the man next door was worried about his big old cottonwood tree falling on his dock. He had it cut down. Mama saw it, “Now why didn’t that man wait till I died, before he cut down that beautiful old tree?” Ruby, that man's wife, she said that she liked to watch my Mother when she come out from the nursing home, for a day with us. Mama would find a broom and start sweeping the driveway. If she come to a fallen limb, she would pick it up and give it a fling--out into the lake.
We got to going to the Senior Citizen Center in Granbury. Thel bought a guitar and started playing and singing again. He had not owned an instrument since he was in the CCCcamp, before he was drafted into the army. The words and music, it all 'come back' to him and he was good!
I tried 'playing Mamas old rub board' for rythm. She had 'rubbed' our clothes on it, every wash day. I put thimbles on my fingers, it was to loud for me. I gave it to someone, I wish I hadn't.
Eldridge let me have Mamas old washtub that was hanging on the outside wall of his house. Mama had used it for years. He was still taking a bath in it, but he nearly had his bathroom shower hooked up. I started ‘Playing the Tub’. The group at the Senior Center was lots of fun and going places. Then after a few years, it kinda fell apart.
We got started going to Bluegrass at Glen Rose, 15 miles south. Many good years of going to Festivals and jams there. Now we usually go on Monday, Friday and Saturday night. There is 6 to 12 or more good friends jamming together.
I am well known because I was always setting there 'grinning'. I did not play the tub, for the first years-- with the good musicians.
Once a girl was playing her tub, she didn't know very much about it. The only other one who ever played. She laid it down and went to the rest room. I got up and played her tub. They all cheered. The real good fiddle player, Plilip Wingfield from Arkansas said, "When I start my next band, I want you to be my bass player." And I was so proud and teased a lot.
An older musition, Dillard, he married and made a big show of dedicating a song to his new wife. I teasingly told Thel that he had never dedicated a song to me.
He quietly said, "Don't you know that every song that I sing--I sing to you?" WOW
'Whisky Before Breakfast' was a good fast fiddle tune that was sometimes played. A new man announced it, and Low and Behold, He sang it! I made my way around to him and asked him for the words that he had just sang. He wrote them for me.
Whisky Before Breakfast key of D
Early one morning when the sun wouldn't shine
I was walking along not feeling too fine
I saw two old men with a bottle between them
And this is the song that I heard them singing
Chorus 2 times
Lord preserve us and protect us
We been drinking whisky before breakfast
So I stopped by the curb where they were setting
And I couldn't belileve how drunk they were getting
I said, "Old men have you been drinking long?
They said, "Long enough to be singing this song"
Chorus 2 times
They asked me to come and take a little sip
And it taste so good I just couldn't quit
So I drank a little more and before to soon
There was three of us there; a singing this tune
Chorus 2 times
Well one by one everybody in town
They heard our ruckus and they all gathered round
The next I knew, the streets were a ringing
with the sound of the whole town, laughing and singing
Chorus 2 times
That was a probition song and it had been in the Methodist hymnal for years.
I had the reputation of being able to 'set there and listen, fifteen minutes longer than anyone else'. It's the good players who are still playing last.
I always had some sewing or mending to be working on. I crochet sometimes. So many couldn't crochet. I had them get their best wash cloth that they had brought with them, and I taught them how to 'shell' around it. My aloe vera kept multiplying. Once I gave away 20 plants of it. I 'started' it for them, in no 3 cans.
In the rain or winter, we played Skip-Bo or 42 in the big building.One spring, in the bluegrass circle in the office at Oakdale Park, there were about 12. A new couple come in and joined the circle. They set across from me and I saw that she had on a pretty brilliant necklass with letters on it. At a pause between songs, I walked over and admired it. She had two of them around her neck and she lifted one off and put it over my head.
It was a cheapy, it said 'Kiss me I'm Irish'. She insisted that I take it and I thanked her.
Thel stopped me before I set down, "You don't ask people for things. You go and give that back to her." Everyone had a big laugh. I wear it glittering, every St Patricks Day.
And Thel was setting there, playing and singing. One expert said, "When he's gone, there won't be any more like him." He always seemed so comfortable with the words.The other players always respected him, honored him. Some musicians would get their face real close to his guitar, as they watched him and tried to figure out his "finger picking." He was always kind and humble. He would never play a solo up on the stage and seldom with a group on stage.
A musician told his wife, "Ask the Moores what they eat. How can they keep on going, like they do?"
Each Thursday night we go 27 miles west to Cedar Point for jamming and a covered dish supper.The food is so good, I usually get a good recipe of something good.
I took a green grape cobbler, come spring. Several people come and said that they hadn't had one since their Grama made one. I made one every week, when I missed, they hollared. I froze some, to have all year. They are the real young mustang grapes, picked before the seed gets big enough to be bitter. They are real sour, but sugar and a pinch of soda takes care of that. They have a wonderfully different tart taste. Try it.
I got tired of taking them. People still ask me if I am still making them. 2014
Thel sings the ‘Old Gospels’ and ‘Silver Hair Daddy’, they are always requested. Bluegrass is at least half, old church songs, Old Southern Gospels. Thel can remember and sing them all, every verse.
Strawberry Roan or a railroad song. Then someone will request 'Swinging Doors', a beer joint song, and everybody had a good laugh.
Jack and Barbara Wade are good friends, he sings popular songs. Thel learned 'Swinging Doors' from him. That's the only song that I can remember him learming. Jack decided to sing 'the old gospels', like Thel. He tried a lot, a long time. He gave it up. Thel sang for years in brush arbors, home quartets and church. he remembers every verse in every old song. You have to 'live it' before you can 'sing it', as good as he did.
Thel turned 70 and Jack told him that anyone that old, they can't sing any more. Thel didn't pay him any attention. Jack didn't feel the same way, when he got to be 70.
Arbuckle Bluegrass park in Oklahoma gets us a couple of times a year. Spring Creek
Music is toward Weatherford, once a month. And we go to ‘Benefits.’
Once a week, Thel would make a big pot of stew and three or four couples come to our home. We would eat and play, so much fun, the neighbors too. Once the preacher come. he wanted to see what we were doing, here at our house every week.
Sometimes Thel would make chili, it was the best. I would cut up a big roast, to the size of the end of my thumb.The last time he made a big pot full; he put potatoes in the chili and finished it off like stew. After that I managed to be the one to make it.
Danny and Nelda Bruce were neighbors of Turmans. We played Skip Bo with them. Thel and I went to see them in their home, just above Lake Weatherford. He had a mandolin on his wall, that his Dad had given him. Thel took it off the wall and played it so pretty; that Danny got interested. Thel showed him and he practiced. He played with a group, a Deputy, Judge and a couple of policemen. Their name was 'Justice Kicking Posse.' He played at church and with the preacher at funerals. Lots of 'gravesides', with just the preacher and family there. The preacher would call him, "I've got us another 'gig' to play." They made up a church group and named it 'The Bog Riders'. That's the cowboys who have the dirty job of going to the swamps and bogs and pull and dig the cows out of the mud.
Danny let his whiskers grow and he looked like Santy Clause. Nelda and him would dress like Mr and Mrs Santy. They would go to schools and nursing homes, a big hit. But in spite of the gloves that they wore, she would catch their bad colds, and get sick. They had to quit after several years.
Danny got so good, that an anonomous benefactor bought him a new mandolin, a beautiful 'Flat Iron', the best mandolin that Gibson makes. He still plays every where for everybody. When Thel is around, Danny tells everyone that "Thel taught me every thing that I know."
They painted a big watermelon on their above ground propane tank. Then a beautiful Texas flag. I want one painted on mine!
The last two or three "Shaw Kemp" festivals, Thel and I stood and played for hours. I, the tub and him the guitar. He was so kind to let me do that. Others joining in along. So many happy pictures taken. Our picture was in the big Texas Monthly.
We play once a week, at the nursing home with another couple. It was a challenge to play in 'the secure hall.’ One man; he took all the pictures off his wall and then all his clothes off and walked out the door of his room, down the hall, stark naked.
I was walking behind him and I told them that I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, from the back. The nurses grabbed a sheet and put it around him. It wasn't his first time.
I handed out Teddy Bears that I get at garage sales.. One old lady said,”They are dead, I don't want anything dead.” I had a stuffed rooster with great big eyes.
"See, is this one dead?” She happily wanted it.
‘Playing the tub’ is fun for them to watch. They think I am waving at them, and they wave back. Then we go and ‘reward ourselves’ at the Chinese restaurant.
That couple bought a new van and sold us their 1998 Oldsmobile, in Dec 2004. We have driven it a lot. It sure has been a good car, in 2015, just 106,000 miles.
I kinda quit playing the tub for years. 2011, I get lots of requests from people who have never heard of 'the tub'. I carry it in the car and I play it, when someone insists.
2014 I was asked if I still played the tub. I said"Sure, when I have someone to play with"
I liked to stand by Thel and pluck the cord, in rythm with him. He was so kind, to let me.
Benny, Ryan and Nathaniel started building radio control airplanes, from kits.
Thel wanted to hang around with them. He wanted a plane a little different. He made one
from ‘scratch’. It flew good and he made another one. He would ‘have an idea' and build
an airplane. Working ‘research and development’ for 32 years at General Dynamics,
he knew about different designs. He enjoyed trying new wing designs and ideas.
He built dozens and they all flew good, but 2, they wobbled. Some had 8 foot wingspan,
and were biplanes, two wings. There are three different wings for one airplane.They were
all pretty and shiny and he never used a kit. Benny said that other flyers at the big
Thunderbird Field couldn't believe that the planes that Thel built and flew were not from kits.
Richard wants to hang all his planes in his big new shop. 14 complete planes and 16 wings.
I have caught more and the biggest fish, standing ‘on our own dirt’. My biggest bass was about ten pounds. We already had one that Benjamin caught, that size mounted. Benjamin said he had to spend his own money, $40 to have it mounted.
Thel always fries ‘our own sand bass’ for anyone who comes to see us.
When it gets to 100 degrees, I swim. I was floating on my back and a beautiful blue dragon fly, he come by and lit on my bright blue toenails. I love to watch the water, the wind, rain, storms, sunrise, sunsets, ducks, gulls, herons and this year the pelicans. They look like giant white turkeys.There is always changing Beauty and Peace and Calm.
(2015 I still like to set and watch the lake go down and the Brazos river across the way.)
MANY THINGS have come down the Brazos River and washed up on our shore
Two or three each, of very size and kind of ball, fishing lures, minnow buckets and corks.
A quart size, thin glass vase, pretty bulb shape, moss growing on it.
A butcher knife with a serrated edge; Thel sharpened it for me so much- that it's not serrated any more. and a plain teaspoon, I use them every day.
A padded barstool, with a heavy metal stand. Thel put dry foam in it and we use it.
I watched a hanging basket with a pretty fern come floating across the water to me.
It’s still pretty, after 7 years. Oh, I put new soil in it, every couple of years.
A good wooden chair that we use on our patio. I gave it to a friend for a pattern.
3 regular size green plastic chairs that set on our front porch.
The two person canvas settee, it’s comfortable to set in, on our patio.
A tree root, a growth, rounding, the size of a big mans head, a real curiosity.
So many shoes. One time, in a few days, here come the mate, they were wearable.
Last week a telephone pole, I tied it up to stay and turtles line up on it, to sun.
Thel has fun moveing them off with his slingshot.
Benjamin’s, Kelsy found a 100 watt light bulb floating in the lake. She screwed it into our floor lamp and it burned! 2015 Now she has baby Riley! My first Great Great! Benjamin and them all come and now we have a 5 generation picture with her!
She's a beautiful prissy one year old. I had lost my tiny black purse,with the chain, it had been two months and had my drivers license and medicare card in it. Riley stood and yanked three cushions off the seat of the rocking chair that I set in. There in the center of my donut hole cushion--was my wadded up purse. I was shocked and tickled.
THE TEETH-here’s the man’s upper false teeth. Thel was with me, when I looked down and saw them, drifting and rocking in the water, on our sand. They are wearable, pretty good looking.
“Two men were fishing and the man up front, he took his upper false teeth out and laid them on the seat behind him. ”Them things never did fit right”
The man behind, thought how funny it would be---and he put that man’s teeth in his pocket. He took his own upper teeth out and laid them on the seat behind the front man. After a while the front man reached back and got the teeth off the seat and put them in his mouth. “Them things never did fit right.” And he gave them a fling out across the water.
My Aunt Ludie, in Mineral Wells, I told her about it. Later, the last time that she ever got to come to see us, I handed her the teeth, and said, “Here’s the teeth.”
She said, ”I thought that was a joke.”
I said, “Well, here’s the teeth.”
Come see us and I’ll show you too.
A neighbor woman was here and I mentioned the teeth. She wanted to see them.
She grabbed them to look, and shook her head, “No.”
She was going to pull her husband water skiing, several years ago. He told her to start off fast. She did---a way to fast. She jerked him down so hard that he lost his teeth. She thought these might have been his teeth.
I have always believed that I will find a body washed up on our 65 feet of shoreline. I'm still looking. I still believe. Every morning, first thing, I look, now 2016.
After Haloween, one morning there was a beautifrul 20 pound pumpkin- up against our dock. I toasted the seed, they were good.
Now there is a 12 foot willow log floated up against my dock. I named it "Old Ugly", it will float away. It did-when Stanley hooked his boat onto it. It kept going over to the side and took him an hour to get it to the trees across the lake..
We set and see-- across the lake-- across the Brazos River. The same river that my Mama was raised on, baptised in. (We have a picture. from a book) That her Uncle John drowned in, when he was eight.
A small cottonwood tree had grown up, three foot from the lake, tall and healthy, a beautiful shade tree. It was a little bigger than a golf ball, around, when we moved here.
Thel worried constantly that it might fall on our house. So he paid $50 to have it cut down. That tree circumed to altzheimers. When I last hugged it, I could not quite reach around it We have five big stumps of it on the edge of our porch. Tommy calls them Belize chairs.
2013 I have made a bottle tree out of the three foot tall stump. 50+ bottles, every color.
The Reunion.
Lee and Annie had worked and traveled everywhere. They lived in California. He drove his Cadilac and pulled his boat and come to see us all. He always drove a Cadilac. He and Annie made a big circle in Oklahoma. They come through Texas and saw the rest of us folks. Annie said that was to long a trip. Next summer they were going to come and camp out at Lake Eufaula and if anyone wanted to see them, they could come there.
Tommy was five and thought they were rich. Driving a Cadilac, pulling a nice big boat and on such a long trip, every year! He asked who Lee was going to give all his money to. (He was to be in his cousin Glenna June's wedding the next week end. He cut his own hair, all that he could reach, right up in the front, down to the skin. They still let him be in the wedding).
One year they had it at Number 9 Landing. Truman told that it was five miles this side of Stigler. Benny said that he guessed that he would have to go to Stigler and drive back; five miles.
There was a rock that kids could get on, in the edge of the water. I set and caught perch there. Then when a new bunch would drive up; I would ask the smallest kid, if he had ever caught a fish. Most of them had not and their parents would tell me that they hadn't ever fished. I told them that they could come with me and I would guarantee they would catch a fish. I made them a each a pole out of a little limb and a string and a hook. Soon they were carrying around 'their own fish'. Such a good time!
That was the reunion that there were three young men on motorcycles. They ate with us.We each thought that they were from another branch of our family. They rode off and we questioned and found that no one knew them. We would have welcomed them.
Years later, Tommy's son Ryan, about 5 was eating breakfast with me and Thel in our motor home, at the reunion. He run outside and told everyone about our good hot biscuits. He told everybody how good they were. It was the cheapy canned biscuits that cost 10 cents a can. We all laughed-because his mother, Kathi is a wonderfull cook.
She always has made good hot homemade biscuits for their breakfast.
50 years of reunion and camping fun, tents and motor homes. The last one, Julias, Grady got scared of James and his beard. The next day he had shaved it off. Now 2015, Grady has a little brother, Ethan, and Ricky has E'oen and Aendriu. Then- it rained and flooded, the Governor closed all the parks in Oklahoma. We had to leave. The last reunion was flooded out before it started. Richard wants it to keep going. Good luck.
Thel's Life
Lee, his oldest brother, "We nearly starved to death the summer that Thel was born.
Granpa Stephens and Uncle Burl come and got the team of mules that we were using to drag the trees off the mountain, near the town of Box. It's under water now. The mules belonged to Granpa Stephens, he raised big red mules and sold them. Our Mommy and Aunt Maud were his daughters."
Lee was ten and staying out of school to help finish the cross ties that they were making to sell to the Midland Railroad. They used hand held 'drawer knives', to finish the crossties. He wanted to go to school, but food come first.
Poppy took Thel to get his drivers license when he was ten. He had to have a license to drive the new truck, because they were in the franchise. Thel stayed out of school and drove the moving truck. His Poppy had to work at his job at the smelter.
When they moved back to Briartown. Thelmer got a job at 8 cents an hour, washing spinach. He just got to work mostly four hours, It could be up to ten hours a day; if enough wagon loads of spinach come in. It was 'take the bench', and set on it and not get paid; untill the next spinach wagon come in.
The oldest boy at home, there were eight in the family to feed. He missed school to help with the field work. He loved basket ball and was good at it. The last schooling that he got, was when he was in the sixth and seventh grade. The teacher come to Poppy and they agreed for Thel to go to school on Friday evenings, so he could play basketball.
The school needed him on their team. And he loved to play. He had quick hands and fingers. He could pick more cotton quicker than anyone else,too.
Bill said that Poppy went to Muskogee for government food. He could not get it, there were able bodied men in his family, at home. No jobs at all.
Bill said, "The McAlister coal mines saved a lot of lives." Poppy and Thel and sometimes Lawrence, dug coal there.
The government come to the mime and talked to them about taking one cent out of each dollar of their paycheck. It would 'take care of them' when they got old. They thought that it sounded good, Social Security. 2015, it's 80 birthday is being celebrated.
Then John L Lewis, the president of the big coal miners union, in person, come and talked to the miners. He talked them into striking for more money, for digging the coal. That sounded good too. There was a strike, that was a mistake. The Company closed the mines and then there was no money at all.
Thel weighed 130, 5-10&1/2 and the Doctor had him drinking a can of beer before supper. He quit that, on his own, as a bad influence on his three boys.
There was a TV commercial. Camel cigaretts, 'I'd walk a mile for a Camel'. Richard and Tommy argued, that wasn't right. Their Daddy smoked Lucky Strikes and if Camels were best, he would be smoking them. Several years later the preacher said,"Anybody want to quit smoking, come to the front." Thel went and never smoked again, he was about 40. (That is one reason that he lived to be 97.)
Wilmas husband, Henry, he asked Thel what he was going to do with that new carton of cigaretts that he knew that he had just bought. Thel gave them to Henry.
Franklin Roosevelt became President in 1933 in the midst of 'The Great Depression, he started the CCC camps. Three million young men quickly joined the army run, work camps. They worked to build parks and roads. Thel got $5 a month and Poppy got $20 a month for him to buy food for his family. Lawrence soon went too.There was a limit of 18 months for each CCC boy.
Thel was soon drafted into the army. He worked up to Mess Sgt,-- Staff Sgt as he fed the troops as they fought up through Italy, and he saw the D day landings.
He was discharged, when the war was over. He wanted nothing more to do with the military. He's never been in any USO or veterans place. He may talk a little with an old Vet. Please don't ask him about his 'best friend' in the army. He had three and they all were killed. He says that no body would believe him, if he told what he saw.
He has never watched a war movie or even an advertisement. I cut them off quick.
He knew that the family wanted his war stories. He told them to me once.
Here they are. Bret, I told you that if you didn't ask him, I would try to get them to you.
He had a light stroke in Feb, 2012, was in the hospital for two days. I never left his room. Benny and Sharon come both days and then brought us home. He had dizziness and severe headaches. He couldn't walk, because of dizziness. The Lady Doctor sent us home with meals on wheels, home health and then hospice. She was smart. That one good balanced meal, it means so much!! I'm still getting it in 2016. Oh, I pay for it.
Stanley and Jackie bought a home on Lake Granbury, near us. I slowly realized later, that it was to help us. She gave a lighter wheel chair that was so much better, it helped us a lot. Thel liked to talk and tell stories. Stanley helped so much; by setting and respectfully listening. Stanley took him to the Doctor the last time. He grabbed Thel like he would a big calf; he didn't let him fall. Home Health was a big help, he didn't have to go out to see the doctor.
Stanley set and listened to his stories. That was such a bigger help. Stanley recognized that 'he believed them'. That's the only wierd thing that Thel did, tell those outlandish stories.
He was never violent. Our Sons worried about that. He stood straight and had a lot of strength. I told them that if he got violent, I would just walk out into the water- into the lake. He was always very stout, erect and strong--- and very kind and considerate.
Wilma boiled a chicken and her and Calvin brought him a pot of dumplins.
He liked that, and the visit especially.
The middle of April, still dizzy, knees and eyes giving away. No medicine nor special therapist, helped his dizziness, or vertigo. He would stand, and then try to walk.
I was always there to help him. I had to keep him from falling.
I knew better, I had been warned that I was not stout enough. He hit the sheetrock. It put a knot on the back of his head and a round hole in the sheetrock. I had to be ready and get him into the wheel chair; or manage to hold him up. I couldn't.
He fell toward me and we went toward the little table. He didn't hit; but my lower back ribs did. The Doctor said they would heal up OK, and they did. I still have numness in the skin of my legs. Then I stayed out from under him. The last time that I have been to the Doctor. He died with five knots on his head, two on his forehead.
Our Heavenly Father
We thank you for this food
We ask your blessing on it
In Jesus name, Amen
He had asked that blessing before every meal that we ever had at our home.
He said that the reason that some people are sick-- it could be -that they don't thank God for their food. He never could remember that blessing again, after being in the hospital.
He mumbled that or other prayer for hours, setting in his big chair, or on his bed.
He bought his Lazy Boy recliner, new, many years ago. He did not want it re-upholstered nor the stuffing replaced, it fit him.
Tommy and Kathi were here from Belize, he stayed several days and nights here.
He could not think of anything else to do. Tommy called me one evening and said that he and Kathi had to fly back to Belize 'in the morning', and how was his Dad doing. I told him that he had been put on hospice that evening.
They did not leave. A week later, he had preached his Dad's funeral. The last week,
there was a nurse here, night and day. (Hospice, because of that Social Security that started eighty eight years ago; when he was working in the coal mine.) He stirred on his bed in the living room.
I wanted to do something. I offered him a few spoons of chicken soup. He was having no pain, nor said anything, nor wanted anything.
He turned his head and went back to sleep. I watched his last three slow breaths.
I laid my hand over his heart and felt the last three beats.
April 28, 1912 His 98th birthday would have been August 6.
Tommy and Stanley carried his wore out old Lazy Boy out to Stanley's truck.
He had wore it's stuffing out and no body could fit in it, but his.
I put a new brown one, from the back porch, in its place.
Hospice listed his death as-Parkinsons- because he couldn't walk. That was wrong, he couldn't walk because he was dizzy. It doesn't matter.
I told Tommy that he had preached his Uncle Eldridge's funeral and his Granmas' and I guess that he could preach his Daddy's. I didn't really mean it, I guess that he kinda wanted to. Ryan and Nathaniel were standing right there, and could have taken over. Them and Zack were playing guitars and a mandolin that their Granpa had given them.
'In the Sweet By and By'
It was dignified and beautiful, The National Cemetary. Matt and Ricky honored Thel by wearing their dress uniforms. Matt and Rickey, they each pressed one of their army metals into Thel's beautiful polished wooden coffin.
I rode with Ricky and Sarah to the funeral.
A couple of months later, Rickey and Sarah took me back to visit there, with their new baby.
As Rickey knelt at Thel's gravestone with tiny E'Oen. I heard him say, "Son , this is the clostest that you can ever be to your Great Granpa."
2015 he has taken Aendriu to his gravestone too.
I am glad that we put him there. And I guess that I will be put there too. But I'm just 92-
Marion Jasper Moore, his Father was born August 28, 1887 Sarah Bell Stephens Moore was born Jamuary 16, 1888