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Stories from West Texas by Rosemary H. Eskridge (Apr 2009) My
cousin Walter was the same age as my younger brother, Frank, and sometimes the
stories the two of the would tell would start an endless verbal competition of
adventures that even Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would have enjoyed. Now, when you
add more cousins, aunts, uncles, sisters, in-laws and extended members of a
family several tape recorders and a host of stenographers couldn’t catch all
the Whirling Dervish. My
Aunt Lerline died on Valentine’s Day and about twenty- or thirty (whose
counting) of us were back at her home after the funeral and as usual I was
sitting on the couch with my laptop on my lap trying to keep up with all the
stories that were literally whirling through the air. As I listened, I remember
that this part of my family loved Country and Western Music often getting
together, telling stories, play guitars, the accordion and singing along. Uncle
Harlie had played the accordion which resulted in both my sister and I learning
to play the accordion. Uncle Harlie
and my mom were brother and sister and our families never got together without
the banter of best told stories about families, school, adventures, travels and
family history shared by everyone who could manage to get their story told. West
Texas slang made the stories even better. Gordon and I have been working on
collecting stories from every person that we have listed on our Family Group
Sheets and Pedigree Charts in our own Personal Legacy Book. “Dead or Alive”,
our families help us write what could be remembered. Glenn,
Walter’s brother started, “When I was in the 2nd grade I had a
girlfriend named “Joan.” Dad had started tooling leather as a hobby and I
asked him if he would make her a leather belt with her name on it.
Unfortunately, when he made it, it turned out backwards and upside down. So, Dad
had to remake it. Unfortunately for us four kids, Mom took possession of the
original belt that was made wrong, and it became the belt of choice to
discipline us with. Many a time, all it took was for Mom to say, “I’m going
to get Joan after you!’ to get our attention. Needless to say, my relationship
with Joan went sour after that”. Now
Walter, couldn’t let that get by without his favorite story “The Shoe.”
Walter began, “At age ten or eleven, mother bought me a pair of vinyl loafers
my uncle Curly was selling. One night I went to the Esquire Theater on
Washington Street. I got to the movies and took a front row seat because
everyone wanted to sit on the front row. Five minutes into the show I went to
the concession and bought some M & Ms. I proceeded back to my seat, opened
the candy and started to fling them up one at a time to catch them in my mouth.
Along comes the usher who just said “Let’s Go.” Well, I knew what that
mean: “Thrown out again!”
I couldn’t call mother and tell her I’d been kicked out of the movies
again, so being summer months and warm, I just hung around outside the movie
theater. I got board and noticed June Bugs on the walkway. I decided I would see
how far I could punt one of these bugs. Well I reared back and gave a kick, and
launched not only the June bug, and the vinyl shoe flew right off my foot and
crashed into the overhead marquee and busted two or three of those little long
neon tubes lights.
Of course, my shoe landed right next to the door where the usher opened
the door and picked up my shoe. I as trapped! The manager made me call home to
tell mother what had happened. We got the money and paid for the light and the
manager gave me two free tickets to “Lawrence of Arabia”. I got my shoe back
along with the two free tickets”.
Glenn retorted, “I remember camping one year and there was this
squirrel that was being particularly noisy, Mom made a comment about how
annoying that squirrel was and Walt picked up a rock and threw it at the
squirrel to shut him up. We were all shocked and amazed that the rock hit the
squirrel and it fell out of the tree dead”.
Walter: I remember a rather large snowstorm that visited Amarillo in the
60’s. They were coming through with the new Interstate 40. We all got our
skies, inner tubes and sleds together and hit the slope. The channel four news
wagon was there so I decided to make my big debut. I was at the top of the slope
with the sled, standing on it. And away I went. Everything was smooth sledding
until I got to the bottom of the slope. I must have tumbled two or three times.
My head hurt, my pride hurt, but sure enough I made it on the 6:00 news”.
Glenn: “I remember Dad and Mom in East Texas going to fish at Lake of
the Pines. Mom was so proud to show me the 5-pound bass she had caught earlier
that day. The only problem was that a snapping turtle had come along and decided
to have sushi and by the time Mom showed me the trophy, all that was left was
the head. She was not happy”.
Walter: “As I and other class mates got older we became much more
daring. Three or four of us would call our folks to say we were spending the
night. Well that left us on the street for the night. We walked over to the
Manley Drive in where we slid the window up and down until the lock sticks fell
out of the window. One of our friends climbed into the window and started making
cokes and handing them out. I went to school Monday bragging about the week end
we had had to some other kids. Our ring leader met me at my locker, grabbed and
pushed me up against the locker and said “Don’t you say another word about
the weekend. All I could squeak out was a quick “Yes Sir.” Later, and
through a few years, finally I told Mother about our escapade. I hate to think
what would have happened, had we got caught at the time.”
Glenn: Mom always had a great sense of humor and would often come out
with the funniest one liners: like having Dad build her a “Fraidy Hole”
after we were all scared out of our wits when a B-52 bomber flew so low over the
house that it sounded like a tornado.”
Walter: “Mom told me of this happening when I was three or four years
old. Dad had been working on our family car for two days trying to get it to
run. I guess he finally found the combination. He had it running the driveway,
when I decided to put my auto techniques to work. I climbed into the driver’s
seat and turned the key off. Boy, was dad upset. He spanked me for turning the
key off; then when the car wouldn’t start, he spanked me again. Grandpa
thought that was the funniest thing he had ever seen. But, Mother didn’t quite
see that way. She was one mad MAMA.”
“Wait”, Walter added. “In 1970 after graduation, we had had our
party down at the bowling alley. After the party, we left in our friends 69
Chevy. We peeled out of the parking lot and sure enough, an officer of the law
stopped us. The officer came up to the driver’s window with his ticket book
out. At the same time the coach came walking up and asked “Officer, can I have
a word with you?” and the officer said, “Sure”. I knew they were cooking
up something. After about a minute the coach walked up to the car and said,
“Phillip, I’m going to give you an ultimatum. Either the officer will write
a ticket or we can square this away when we get back to the gym. Solemnly,
Phillip told the coach he’d rather pay at the gym. We got back, made one big
circle around Phillip and the coach and he laid ten big ones on Phillip.
Ouch!!!!!!!!!
Then Beverly another cousin had to tell about Grandmother. She laughed as
she said, “When Grandmother McBride was born, the family lived in tents and
whatever was available as well as the covered wagon in which they traveled. They
lived around Tribbey, Oklahoma, which in 1902 was still Indian Territory.
Grandmother was afraid of Indians. Once, she saw an Indian and it scared her, so
she would always get in the chuck box on the wagon and hide from them. One time,
while she was hiding in the Chuck box, her sister, Eldridge, put the bolt on the
Chuck Box and locked her in. She was not happy about not being able to get out
when she wanted.
Aunt Cleora had to add her adventure about learning to drive. Cleora
began, “My brother, Henry” at age 15 had just learned to drive and he wanted
me to learn to drive so he put me in the passenger seat and he started his old
car. We were about six miles from home and I scooted over in the driver’s seat
and he crawled out the driver’s window onto the hood, so he could climb over
and come back in the rider’s window. Well, he fell off. And here I was sitting
up there going down the road and he must of run two miles before he caught me. I
was just sitting up there and he had to run his little legs off. He finally
caught me and stopped the car. It’s a wonder I hadn’t run in a ditch and
killed myself.”
Uncle Artie had to tell us about his friend Othel Johnson who went to the
lake and gathered up mud hen eggs. Artie asked Granma McBride to cook them.
Othel said he could eat six. Artie said he could eat the same. Othel decided he
could eat six more. Artie could get down four, so he gave Othel his left-over
two, making Othel eat fourteen mud hen eggs.
Then back to Aunt Lenora who was over 90.
“She tells us that, “When I was about six or seven years old, we had
a sled and we had the water barrel on that and the team of horses hooked on to
the sled. Now my brother Henry thought it would be funny to put me over in the
empty water barrel on the way to the creek. I thought everything Henry did was
all right. Neither of us expected the horses to have a runaway and all the time
I was in the barrel wondering what was happening. “Boy, was Papa upset when he
found out.”
These were typical of the stories told by the family before they would
get out the guitars and then they would sing songs for the rest of the evening.
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