The Cross Timbers (2 page)

Our house stood on a tree-crowned hill near the center of the little farm and faced the west. From the front door we had a magnificent view of the broad, flower-spangled prairie, which lay beyond the railroad that skirted the western border of the farm. The original house was built of logs and consisted of only two rooms and an attic bedroom reached by a sort of combination of ladder and stairway. When I was about three, however, my father had added on the north a large kitchen built of lumber, where we cooked and ate. It was furnished with a big
wood stove with a kitchen table beside it, and the large dining table covered with oilcloth except if “company” came, at which time a white or red tablecloth was spread over it. In addition, there were two or three chairs with rawhide seats and a tall cupboard called a “safe,” where the dishes and leftover food were stored. With respect to food, however, the term “safe” was something of a misnomer with a couple of ever-hungry boys in the house.

The small rear room was Mattie's and had her bed and a couple of trunks that held linens, shirts, and underwear. Outer clothing was hung on nails driven in the walls, while surplus bedding was stacked on two or three shelves.

The large “front room,” as we called it, had a big stone fireplace on the north side and from each corner of the mantle was hung a glass tumbler in a crocheted mesh bag. These held buttons, pins, needles and thread, and other small objects. The big bed of my father and mother stood in the southeast corner of the room. It was covered with a white counterpane and had a bolster and two large pillow shams.

A small trundle bed on rollers was kept under this big bed by day and rolled out at night. I slept on this until I was four or five years old, but then demanded permission to sleep with George upstairs in the attic. A couple of rag rugs on the floor, a rocker or two, and three or four straight chairs completed the furnishing of this principal room of the house. The problem of storage was in part solved by a big cellar in the back yard, where my mother kept milk, butter, and jars of canned fruit, preserves, and pickles. There were also bins for the storage of turnips, sweet potatoes, and other vegetables.

Some distance south of the house were pole-fenced lots for the horses and pigs, and sheds, stables, and corn cribs. Our front door opened upon a small porch from which a path led to the front-yard gate. On either side of this path was a Russian mulberry tree and flowers, including zinnias, phlox, pinks, and iris—then commonly called “flags.” North of the house was the garden and beyond it an orchard of more than a hundred trees, mostly peach, but with a few apple, pear, cherry, and plum trees.

This fifty-six–acre tract of land was only three miles east of the prairie farm which my father had rented a few months after his arrival in Texas. He had bought it about a year or so after moving onto the rented place from Ike Roberts, an old cowman whose father had received a large land grant in this area from the Texas Republic. Ike had inherited this grant at his father's death and was selling it in tracts of a size to suit the purchaser. He still retained a huge acreage, however, on which his cattle grazed, as did the milk cows of the nearby farmers since most of his pasture land was not fenced. His home was a large ranch house on top of a small tree-covered knoll, well out on the prairie and commonly called “Brushy Mound.”

When my father bought this little parcel of land it was covered with timber, largely blackjack, but with many large post-oak trees which could be used in building a house and out buildings. During the years before the lease expired on the prairie farm he spent every day that could be spared from growing and harvesting crops to improving his new property. He cut down the larger trees and squared the logs for the house and barns, cleared away the underbrush, and planted an orchard.

When a field had been cleared he enclosed it, in Indian fashion,
with a brush fence, pending the time when he could split enough rails to replace this with a rail fence. At times it must have seemed an almost hopeless task, for after the trees had been felled the stumps must be grubbed out with a mattock, or “grubbing hoe.” Moreover, the forest fought back in a most stubborn fashion, for sprouts persistently sprang up in a desperate attempt to resist the work of man and again “let in the jungle.” He never despaired, however, and just before I was three years old he moved us into our new log house and soon added the large kitchen.

Most of the people in our community, and throughout the Texas Cross Timbers, had homes like ours, except perhaps for the big orchard. Some of our neighbors, however, had much larger houses, especially if they had large families of children, but it must be confessed that there was little relationship between the size of a family and that of its living quarters. The Clarks, who owned a twenty-acre farm joining ours on the east, had five children, but lived for some years in a crude, two-room log house before adding another room at a cost of forty dollars!

It must be admitted that our little house would be considered very small today, but in the 1880's it seemed quite adequate for a family of five. All my father's older children were grown up and out on their own. The first and second sons, Henry and Frank, and the oldest daughter, Fannie, were in Nebraska. The third son, Tom, had married Lucy, the youngest daughter of an old Texan of the neighborhood who had deeded the young couple a farm about a mile southeast of ours. Alice, the middle daughter, had a job in a Dallas hospital. As to the other two sons, Jay was bookkeeper for a large general merchandise store at Fort Griffin,
Texas, and his younger brother, John, was teaching school near that little frontier post.

Humble as was our little home, it was a very happy one. My father worked from dawn to dark improving the farm, and my mother was a remarkably good cook who prepared excellent meals, sometimes from quite meager resources, and kept every room neat and clean. Most of the food came from the farm, since we had milk cows, chickens, and pigs. The orchard and garden furnished an ample supply of fruit and vegetables, and half a dozen stands of bees yielded plenty of honey.

Our greatest difficulty was a lack of water for household use. Father had dug two wells and although he struck a plentiful supply of clear, cool water at a depth of about thirty feet, it tasted as though the contents of a family medicine chest had been dumped into it. Just what minerals it had in solution we never knew, for no one in the community had ever heard of water analysis. Strangers who were called upon for information tasted it, made a face, and guessed that it might be saltpeter, gypsum, or any other mineral of which they knew.

As a result, we were forced to haul water in barrels from a big spring half a mile away or from the well of our nearest neighbor. A small stock pond was built in the hog pasture to supply water for the livestock, but in time of drought we sometimes rode the horses to the spring to water them. We also often took the family washing to the spring or the neighbor's well on “washday.”

The railroad which ran along the western edge of my father's farm was the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. On it, a mile and a half south of us, was the little village of Keller. This was our nearest town though Roanoke was only three miles north of our
home. Fifteen miles south of Keller was Fort Worth, at that time a little city of perhaps thirty thousand. I never visited it, however, until after I was eight years old. In fact a trip to that city was something to be considered carefully, and almost prayerfully, for a journey of sixteen and a half miles in a farm wagon was quite an adventure. One was forced to start at dawn and seldom got back until after dark. Besides, my father felt that the relationship between Fort Worth and ancient Sodom was much the same as that between Minneapolis and St. Paul—a feeling which at that time may have had some justification!

In the fall of 1884 Henry sold his Nebraska farm and came to Texas to spend the winter with us. He drove down with a new wagon and a team of large horses and considerable money in his pocket. He had developed a great interest in photography and promptly bought a couple of cameras and materials for developing pictures.

Obviously, no one in the community had any money to buy photographs, but he made many tintypes and other photographs of members of the family. These he touched up with paint until we looked like Indians ready for the warpath. He put gold rings on our fingers and, if not bells on our toes, brooches and watch chains on blouses and vests that had never known such adornment. When winter was over he gave up the venture and drove out to the Wichita Falls and Vernon, Texas, area to engage in freighting, hunting, and trapping.

Mattie had spent part of the fall and winter of 1884–1885 at Fort Griffin visiting Jay, who had secured a room for her at the home of his landlady. She must have had a wonderful time attending parties and socials in this little frontier town, where the
coming of an attractive young girl was an event of major importance. Here she made many friends, including the young man she was to marry later.

Jay's employers not only owned the large general merchandise establishment for which he was bookkeeper but also had extensive ranching interests and some manufacturing enterprises in Mexico. In the spring of 1885 they were sending a herd of 2,500 steers north to a range in North Dakota. Jay, tired of indoor life, asked them to give his brother John and him a job on this northern drive.

With some reluctance they agreed and the two brothers made the long drive to the range of the Long X Ranch near that of Theodore Roosevelt. Here Jay remained for a year, but the following summer his employers offered him the job of bookkeeper for a cottonseed-oil mill and soap factory they owned in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and he gladly accepted. Later that summer Mattie returned to Fort Griffin to visit friends there and soon wrote that she had married the young man she had met the preceding winter.

That fall came the death of my mother. She was a sweet-faced, gentle woman, too frail perhaps for the hard life of the American frontier of that time. Her health had been bad for two or three years, but she was always cheerful and happy and was never confined to her bed.

For some reason I was sleeping on the little trundle bed in the back bedroom when I was awakened by George shaking my shoulder and saying, “Oh, Ed, poor old Ma is dead, we won't ever get to see her any more.”

I sat up with my eyes heavy with sleep not quite able to realize the tragedy that had befallen us. Then my father came in and
kissed me gently and went out. I got up and dressed; while going through the living room to the kitchen I saw a sheet spread over something on the bed which I knew must be my mother's body. Lucy and a couple of other women were in the kitchen, while George was outside doing the chores, and Father had gone to Keller for a casket.

The women fixed me some breakfast and when George had finished with feeding the livestock, he was sent to notify two or three of the neighbors and I trailed along. When we reached the first house George knocked at the door and when a woman opened it he said, “They sent me over to ask if you'd come over and help us a little. Ma died last night and we need a little help.”

The shocked look on the woman's face as George made his simple announcement is still vivid in my memory. She replied that she would be right over and George and I went on to take our message to a couple of other neighbors.

When we reached home, she and three or four other neighbor women were there. Some of them had brought their children, who were playing about in the yard. On the little porch before the front door an old woman sat in a rocking chair picking out the seeds from a pile of cotton in her lap to make a little pillow for my mother's head. I went inside and saw a long black box with shining handles, which I knew was the coffin to hold her body.

I joined the other children at play in the yard while the women inside the house, with rough, toil-worn hands, prepared the body for burial and cooked dinner and supper. Most of them then returned to their homes, but three or four men and women remained to watch throughout the night, as was the universal custom.

The next afternoon the casket was placed in a wagon, and we all drove to the little Bourland Cemetery, where Reverend Bourland conducted a brief funeral service. The casket was then lowered into the grave which willing neighbors filled. Then my father, George, and I, accompanied by Tom and Lucy, returned to our little house which seemed strangely empty and lonely. The next day, however, Alice resigned her job in the hospital and came home to keep house for us.

2. Neighbors and Visitors

It is fortunate that children seldom brood long over a tragic loss or great sorrow. George and I loved our mother dearly but her passing made little change in the normal pattern of our lives. Our sister Alice, who was a fairly large blonde woman, took over the management of the little household with expert hands.

She was a good cook, an excellent housekeeper, and so much older than ourselves that we accorded to her the same respect that we had always given to our mother. In fact, courtesy to older persons had been taught me so thoroughly since earliest childhood that my practice of it proved a bit embarrassing sometimes in later life, when some people thought me old-fashioned.

Upon one occasion I heard someone calling me from the next room. Thinking it was George, I yelled, “What!” Unfortunately it was my father, who came in frowning as he asked, “What do you mean by answering me like that? Isn't that a pretty way for a boy to talk to his father? You say ‘Sir' when you speak to me.”

I could only reply in stammering fashion that I thought it had been George calling me, which was the Gospel truth.

Long before the death of my mother I had developed something of a local reputation for singing and quoting verse. This was probably due to my lisping voice and inability to pronounce
the letter
s.
One of my favorite songs was the old ballad about Sam Bass, the Texas outlaw, whose center of operation had been the town of Denton, about twenty miles north of our home. My own version of the first two stanzas was as follows: