Pauline and Mama

Not long before she died, Pauline shared two letters with me, which were written by my mother about 1946 or 47. They were especially eye opening to me. For one thing, I learned she and Pauline had a very close relationship. When I said something to Pauline about it she said, “Ruby was my bud.” The letters reveal how much she shared her emotional struggles with Pauline. As a young boy of 11 or 12 I had no inkling of what was to come, but Mama let Pauline know there was something wrong on the inside. These latters were written just prior to the time she began to show obvious evidence of mental illness. Among other things I picked up on the fact that there was a terrific mother-daughter conflict between her and Grammy. I never suspected it.

I made my way into the stories a little bit. I was a pretty skinny kid at the time. My grandparents leaned on Mama pretty hard because she and Daddy required me to work in the fields in the summer time. They thought I was too frail. She responded by saying that it didn’t seem to hurt me. She said I seemed happy and never complained. I don’t know about the complaining part, but I found the frail part pretty laughable.

Between the sixth and seventh grades, I spent the summer helping my father quarry rock out of a dry creek bed. I was swinging a 16 pound sledgehammer, which I could not do today. I doubt if I've ever been in better physical condition. It doesn’t look like field work or the rock quarrying had any permanent effect on me other than to convince me that I didn’t want to be a farmer and I was interested in a rock quarrying future. Apparently my father never heard about child labor laws.

Pauline was always concerned about me when I was growing up. She once asked me if I was properly clothed and fed. I didn’t understand her concern but then again I didn’t recognize our poverty. I did have adequate food and clothing but not much else.

Pauline's Story - Written By Her Own Hand

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(At the graveside service for Pauline, I was handed a note written by her approximately one week prior to her death on May 26, 2002 at the age of 95 years 6 months and 18 days. Her story in her own words follows.)

“On November 6, 1906, I arrived at the home of John and Ada Lane around 2:00 A.M. about two miles out of Hico on the old Hico and Hamilton highway. Lived in and around Hico, finished school here and went to business college for a year. Came back and worked four years in the Hico National Bank until it was closed due to the Great Depression. There wasn’t enough money for two banks.

“Worked at a gin for two years as a bookkeeper until there wasn’t enough cotton for two gins on account of boll weevils. Lived on the farm until 1937.

“Moved into town, bought a café on Highway 281, ran it until World War II.

“Moved to San Antonio, then to Fort Worth where I lived until 1992. Moved back to Hico.

“Was a café owner and cashier for 42 years.”

Pauline Mountain - 2002

The Lanes of Hico - Bobbie Pauline

John Wesley Lane and Ada Webb were married in Hamilton County, Texas on December 27, 1905. They lived together until my grandfather’s death, but I do not remember a fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. Maybe there was one, but I don’t recall attending it.

Nine children were born to that union. I will say a little bit about each one of them beginning with the firstborn.

Bobbie Pauline was born November 8, 1906 in Hico. There is a discrepancy here. Her own autobiography, composed about a week before her death, identified her birth date as November 6 at 2:00 A.M. According to the birth certificate, she was born on November 8 at 11:00 P. M. I don't know which one is correct.  She married Earl Patterson on August 28, 1929, but was later divorced. She also married Elbert Phillips in 1938 or 1939. Loretta Holley, my mother’s youngest sister wrote, “Elbert spent a year or so in the penitentiary for a felony he committed five years earlier. When he got out they moved to Fort Worth. He was the love of her live and it broke her heart when he left her for a younger woman.” Their divorce was in ’43 or ’44. She later man named Mountain and was later divorced from him. She never remarried after that and had no children.  

About 1942 or 43 she moved in with Loretta in San Antonio. Loretta got her a job working with Gulf Oil Company at a service station. I remember when Pauline ran Camp Joy, a tourist court and service station in Hico. That was before they were called motels. I used to go there and visit her when I was a small boy. She later moved to Fort Worth, where she lived for many years. She took in many young men, who lived in her home for awhile when they came to Fort Worth for work.  Sometimes she would drive unannounced to West Texas and visit with us. She was always kind to me.  She was generous and probably my mother's closest sibling.

I visited her three or four times over the last ten years of her life. I was amazed to learn that she lived in a house we actually lived in when I was very small. We only lived there a month or two, and I don’t remember much about it, but when I went into the house, I sort of remembered the general layout. Daddy told me that he moved out of that house because he had to pay rent. My grandfather had an old house on his farm that was serving as a barn. We were able to live there rent free. Of course Pauline’s house has been remodeled and improved since them. Pauline passed away on May 26, 2002. I was privileged to conduct her graveside service at Hico.

Georgia Roots - the Webbs

John Wesley Webb was probably a Copperhead.   The Copperheads were not snakes.  They were people who lived in the north during the Civil War but were sympathetic to the Confederacy.  There were quite a lot of them in the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.   Clement Laird Vallandigham of Ohio was the most prominent of the Copperheads.   During the war, he was arrested, tried and sentenced to prison, but there was such an outcry among Northern sympathizers that Lincoln commuted his sentenced and exiled him to the confederate states for the duration of the war.   It has been said that they were called Copperheads because they would cut the Liberty head out of a penny and attached it to their lapels to indicate their sympathies.   They were so public about it that many of them ended up leaving the North, made their way to various places in the South and joined up with confederate armies.  I’m not totally sure if my great grandfather left Illinois at the breakout of hostilities or if he moved to Georgia after the war started.   I do know that he joined the Confederate army in Georgia at the age of 16.

According to one story, he married, ran away from home and crossed a river.  I’m not sure where the river was.   Assuming that he may have done all this in Illinois, it is quite possible that the Ohio River is the river he crossed.   I have no information about how long he served the Confederacy or which campaigns he participated in.   He apparently survived a war in which starvation, dysentery and other diseases took about as many lives as Yankee minnie balls.  

There is some discrepancy about his wife’s name.  I think the Lora Anglin story is probably the one that most people subscribe to, although there are some people who think his wife’s surname was Cobb.   Melba thought that Cobb was his mother’s maiden name. With the name, John Wesley, it’s probably safe to assume that he had Methodist roots.  Ironically, his son-in-law would also be named John Wesley.   I knew my mother attended the Methodist church in her youth.  I asked Loretta if Methodist roots were in the family background.  She really didn’t know.   She said that none of them went to church until my mother started attending the Methodist church and encouraged other family members to go with her.

The Webb children were Naith,  John, Ed, Ray, Sam, Minnie, Palace, Ada, Florence and Bobbie (Roberta).  I remember meeting Uncle Ed sometime in the forties.  He lived in Oregon.   I also remember seeing Aunt Palace, when she visited.  According to Loretta, she was from Duncan, Oklahoma.  Loretta sent me a picture of Aunt Bob when she came for a visit.  She spent most of her life in Chicago.   Aunt Palace came for a visit in the forties.   I have a strange memory of her.   She wore a ladies dress hat.  It had a lace net attached to it that covered a part of her face.   I  remember thinking it looked funny.  My cousin, Jean, reminded me that she walked with a crutch and used only one crutch.   I had forgotten that but she is right.  Aunt Minnie is buried somewhere near Comanche, Texas. 

The Webb family moved from Georgia to Texas in about 1892.   They moved to a place called X-Ray and then Thurber.  Thurber is now almost a ghost town.  It is located on I-20,  about 30 miles west of Weatherford.  If you’ve traveled that road, you’ll remember seeing the tall smoke stack.

Right after we married, I preached in Strawn, Texas, which is very near Thurber.  Thurber and Strawn were coal-mining towns.  For a few years the coal mining industry flourished around Thurber.   The old timers told me that Strawn once had a population of 30,000.  Today it probably has 300.   Thurber still has the old smoke stack, but not much else.  I’m assuming my great grandfather probably went there to work in the mines.   Mining was abandoned at Thurber and Strawn because the coal was inferior in quality to the eastern coal.

Sometime about 1903 or 1904, they moved to Big Eye between Hico and Iredell.   I don’t know the exact location of Big Eye. I do know that I was born very close to it.  There was a school building there and my father conducted church services there in the thirties.   It is somewhere near Langston’s Cross on the Bosque River  a few miles south of present day State Highway 6.  I was amazed when I visited a Sunday morning church service in Hico about ten years ago.  A lady came up to me and said, “Your parents used to live near Langston’s Crossing didn’t they?”    I was amazed that anybody would remember that.  That was 75 years ago.  

Weaving a Tangled Webb Down Memory Lane

Today, I’m switching to the maternal side of my family.  I don’t have as many good stories to tell.  My mother was mentally ill for 35 years and she simply was not able to leave as many stories behind, although there were some.  But she was not as talkative as my father and didn’t feel inclined to share as much about her background.    I am indebted to her sister, the late Melba Clark, for some family background.  My cousins, David Lane and Diana Cowen, have done some genealogical work and may be consulted for serious information in that area.  Also, Mama’s youngest sister, Loretta, shared some things with me before her death two years ago.

My grandfather’s name was John Wesley Lane.  He was known to us as “Papa.”   He was born in Hico, Texas on August 31, 1879 and lived his entire life there.  He died on September 27, 1961.   His father’s name was Charles Lane and his mother’s name was Samantha, Medford.  According to Loretta, Papa’s grandmother was a Choctaw Indian

My grandmother’s name was Ada Webb.   I called her “Grammie” although other grandchildren call her “Granny.”   Interestingly enough our grandchildren call Ann, “Grammie.”   Ann absolutely refused to be called “Granny.”   I didn’t want to be called, “Papa.”   My son came up with the name “Grandy” which I like, but they never give me free food at Grandy’s restaurants.  I guess we have come full circle.  Elliott is a grandfather now, and he’s “Papa.”   

Ada Webb was born on September 10, 1889 in Spring Place, Georgia, which is near Dalton.  She died in a nursing home at Meridian, Texas on April 7, 1977.    Her father’s name was John Wesley Webb and her mother’s name was Lora Anglin. John Wesley Webb was from Elijay, Georgia.   Lora Anglin is said to have been raised in French aristocracy, but was disowned by her family when she married my great grandfather, who was a Georgia sharecropper.

Remembering Aunt Elmy .

After the death of George Washington Mackey, his second wife, Aunt Elmy (who doubled as mother-in-law and sister-in-law to my paternal grandmother) continued to live on the farm at Clyde and raise produce.

Aunt Elmy was white headed and tied her long hair in a bun on the back of her head.  To my young way of thinking, she was a stern, humorless woman, in contrast to Grandpa Mackey.   She didn’t seem to have a lot of patience with kids and she was stingy.  Once my cousin, Noma and I walked to her place because she had offered to pay us for picking the dewberries.  After picking berries for a while, we brought our baskets to Aunt Elmy.  She complained about the meager amount we had picked and reluctantly gave each of us a penny for our efforts.   It was almost as if we had cheated her. 

I know she probably had many virtues, but I don’t really recall much kindness, yet for some reason, Noma and I were always anxious to go and visit her.  Maybe it was because we liked to play under the grape arbor, found ourselves fascinated by the Maytag or looked forward to finding creative games we could play with the snuff bottles.

Sometime in the forties, Richard, her youngest son, and his wife Ella Mae moved to California.   Aunt Elmy went with them, but kept the house. Grandpa and Grandma Bales moved in.   In the fifties that part of the Mackey clan returned to Texas, but the lure of the Golden West was strong, and they soon returned to California.  Aunt Elmy lived until 1972, when she died in Antioch, California. I never saw her again after they moved west.  However, Ann and I did have an opportunity to visit Lady Beth in Antioch in the early nineties.

Grandpa Mackey's Spiritual Influence

I got special attention from him when we visited.   He started molding me to preach.  In fact, he called me, “The Little Preacher.”   Grandpa Mackey was active in the life of the Church of Christ in Clyde.   He was a long time subscriber to the Firm Foundation, a weekly Christian periodical published in Austin, Texas.  It had been founded in the late nineteenth century by Austin McGary, a militant polemicist, who disagreed with David Lipsomb’s views on “rebaptism..”   Lipscomb was willing to accept what McGary called “sect baptism”, i.e. he was willing to accept candidates for church membership who had initially been baptized in some other church fellowship.  McGary considered these views heretical and started the Firm Foundation to argue against Lipscomb’s views as they were presented in the Gospel Advocate.   

By the time I knew Grandpa Mackey, both Lipscomb and McGary were long dead.  rebaptism was not a hot issue.   The Firm Foundation was much more tolerant of the Gospel Advocate.   For Texans in the thirties and forties, it was the Church of Christ equivalent of The Baptist Standard.   Church leaders subscribed to it to keep up with what was going on.   McGary had given way to a more irenic editor, G. H. P. Showalter, although many of his writers were not.    Showalter’s stable of writers included  people like R. L. Whiteside, Foy E. Wallace, Jr. and the colorful, though sometimes crude Texas preacher, J. D. Tant.   Tant was popular among rural Texas churchgoers.  Tales of his debates and encounters with those who crossed him were legendary and were often repeated within our family.

Grandpa’s interest in me had nothing to do with church politics, the papers, the debaters,  or the preachers.  He wanted to do his best to give me a head start in Bible studies.  I was assigned memory work.   I got the passages that were most prominently used as texts by preachers in the churches of that day – Mark 16:16 and Acts 2:38 among others.   When we came to visit, he would take me into his bedroom soon after I came.  I was then asked to recite passages he had assigned me.  When I had successfully done so, I was given a tiny Bible storybook that he had purchased from the Firm Foundation Publishing House in Austin.  The books were less than two inches tall, about an inch wide and perhaps a half an inch thick.  Each one contained some Biblical story, usually from the gospels.   I worked diligently on my memory work. 

THE SNUFF BOTTLES

Aunt Elmy - c. 1970

Antioch, California

The other thing about the Mackey place I remember was Aunt Elmy’s Garrett snuff bottles.  Most of the older women dipped snuff.    There were basically two popular brands of snuff – Garrett and Honest.    The snuff came in dark colored bottles with  x’s on the bottom.  The x indicated the strength of the snuff.  A single x was fairly mild, while a quadruple x indicated pretty strong stuff.   I never had any desire to sample the contents although some of my cousins did and then wished they hadn’t.    The empty bottles were thrown away in the back yard. I presumed they were hauled of periodically.  They were great to play with.  You could have all kinds of "pretend” uses for a snuff bottle.    I don’t know where they were eventually dumped, although they would probably bring a fortune at an antique place today.