Memories of Papa - John Wesley Lane (2)

I'm sorry these posting have been interrupted.  I've been in the hospital.  Now to continue

Cedar Posts, the Milk Run, and Snakes in the House

The Lanes lived on a farm west of town and I loved going there to visit.  Sometime early in 1940, we moved into an old house, which had been turned into a barn on the place Papa was farming.  

I don’t believe Daddy sharecropped that year.  He was trying to pick up money by hauling cedar posts and running a milk route.  He would also hire himself out for light hauling of any kind. He had a flat bed ton and a half truck – a 1931 Model B Ford.   He would drive to Burnet, cut posts and then bring them back to Hico to sell.   I’m sure he probably got a nickel or a dime for each post.    In those days farmers often sold their milk to keep cash coming in.  They would collect their milk early in the morning in ten-gallon cans and set them on the side of the road.  Daddy came along, picked up the cans and hauled them to the creamery in Stephenville.  The cans were then emptied, washed and placed back on the truck.  He would drop them back off at the various farms.   I don’t think there was any refrigeration and I’ve often wondered how the milk stayed fresh in the summer time.   Actually, I don’t think it was out on the road very long before Daddy picked it up.

Anyway, back to my story about living on the Lane farm.  I recall one very traumatic day in that house.  Hay had been stored there and we had moved in during the winter.   As springtime came, the weather warmed and we discovered that we did not have the house to ourselves.   I don’t know exactly where they came from, but huge black snakes began crawling in the house (chicken snakes I would imagine).   I found it terrifying and the memory of it still remains firmly embedded in my mind 60 years later.

Some of my memories of those days are pretty sketchy, but others are vivid. I remember one spring day when we still lived on the Benton place, east of Hico.   Daddy had two horses.   One of them was named Prince.  I remember Prince because he was broken to ride and I sometimes got to ride him.  On this particular day, we went to help Papa.   I think Daddy plowed in the field with his team.   I seem to recall he threw a turning plow onto the back of the wagon.    We set out for Papa’s house before daylight.   I can remember lying in the back of the wagon and looking up at the stars.  I can remember the sound of the wagon wheels on the gravel road and then ultimately on the pavement as we got to the Hico-Iredell road.   I fell asleep.  When I woke up, the sun was up and we were at Papa and Grammies.

Papa plowed with the tractor and Daddy plowed with the wagon and team.   I guess Grammie fed me breakfast and looked after me until about mid-morning.  I was anxious to go the field.  I was especially anxious to go see Papa where he was plowing with the tractor.   He owned a Model B John Deere.    On my desk in my office I have a replica of a 1934 Model A John Deere with steel wheels.   It looks almost like Papa’s tractor.    The tractor had a two-cylinder engine, built in such a way that the pistons lay horizontally.   The tractor made a popping noise and was commonly known as “The poppin’ Johnny.”   I thought it was a sad day when the John Deere company went to larger engines and took the pop out of the Johnny.    The flywheel was on the outside and you had to manually turn the flywheel to crank the tractor.   There was no power lift.  You had to manually lift the plows at the end of each row.

On this particular day, Papa was breaking land.  He pulled a breaking plow behind the tractor.  He plowed in rounds and didn’t have to raise the plows once they were set for proper depth.   When I got to the field, he stopped the tractor and invited me to sit in front of him on the seat.  He let me steer the tractor for several rounds.  Of course he made corrections, when my steering didn’t go in the right directions.  But that was a big day for me because I got to drive the tractor.

Memories of Papa - John Wesley Lane (1)

I've now completed my posts about my mother's siblings.  Beginning with this post, I'll share some memories of my maternal grandparents.

Saturday Afternoons in Hico

It’s a funny thing.  I don’t remember exactly how tall John Wesley Lane was.   He had tall sons and I want to say that he was tall.   He was a thin man, who was bald headed by the time I knew him.   Of the hair that he had left, there was not a strand of gray anywhere in his hair that I can remember.

My earliest memories of him involve Saturday afternoons in Hico.  In the late thirties, people gathered in town at Hico on Saturday afternoon.   I suppose they came in to pick up supplies and do their trading.   We usually sold cream and eggs, which was about the only cash we had until the crops were sold.  If you managed to get $3 or $4 for the butter and eggs, then you would be able to buy flour, coffee, pinto beans, potatoes, corn meal and maybe a few extras.  That would get you by for several days.   There wasn’t a great deal of variety in the diet, but you didn’t starve either.  When I started to school, the teachers taught us about the basic food groups and the need for a balanced diet.   It was kind of ridiculous.   Most of us couldn’t afford a balanced diet, and we probably wouldn’t have thought healthy foods tasted well.   Nobody ever heard of cholesterol, and most foods were fried in hog lard. At various times of the year, meat from the smokehouse and vegetables from the garden supplemented those staples.  We also raised frying size chickens.   My mother was adept with an axe, but I remember others who simply twisted the bird’s head off.   I would forget about the bird’s pain, when I saw the fried chicken on the plate.  I loved the pulley bone.   We ate better in the summers than we did in the winters

We also went to town to visit with friends, family and neighbors.  The sidewalks were so thick with people that you could barely walk down the street, but I always knew where to find Papa, my grandfather.  He would be sitting next to the big picture window at the dry goods store (Hoffman’s, I think).    He was always anxious to see me.  He would always give me a penny, which I usually exchanged for a large stick of peppermint candy.

Sometime in late 1940 or  early 1941, we moved to Clyde and I was never quite as close to Papa again, although I still looked forward to each an every visit.   After we moved to Clyde I remember him sending me a dollar in the mail every year on my birthday.  That was a pretty big birthday present for a six-year-old boy.  The dollar continued to come in the mailbox until I reached adulthood.

Raymond Earl Lane - Fireworks and RC Colas

One of our annual activities was shooting off fireworks around Christmas time.   I learned boldness in igniting the fireworks from Raymond.  He was brave enough to light a firecracker in his hand and throw it.  I decided if Raymond could do it, I could do it.  I don’t normally take the lead in getting into mischief, but I am a cooperative follower of the fellow who wants to bend the rules. I recall one year when the grownups decided I was old enough to walk to the movies at the theater in Hico.  It was normally a pretty safe thing to do.   I wasn’t a candidate for kidnapping.   After all my last name wasn’t Vanderbilt. 

For some reason Raymond wasn’t with us, but my cousin, Jean was allowed to go with me.  Of course, I had to show off for Jean.  I was lighting firecrackers and throwing them.   All of a sudden one of the things went off in my hand.  I couldn’t let Jean know how much pain I was in because I would be showing my weakness to a girl, but I think my hand hurt all evening.  I never had much use for firecrackers after that, and I can’t tell you what the movie was about.

We had no television in those days, so we were collectors of comic books.   I would trade with Raymond.   I always looked forward to a visit to Hico because I knew I would get a bunch of them from him.   To me, it always seemed that he had the real neat ones and I had the ones that were just so-so.  I thought I got the best end of the trade.  Of course, I probably had read mine over and over so many times that I was bored with them.

One year Raymond came to visit us.  I’m not sure if he rode the bus or came on the train, but I’m pretty sure it was one or the other.  I don’t think he rode in an automobile. We had to work in the field hoeing cotton every day, and it was some kind of hot.   Can you imagine going into a classroom and showing a stalk of Johnson Grass at show and tell time.   It made the days go a lot swifter for me because we talked a lot while we were fighting Johnson Grass. 

Somehow, we conned my parents into making a daily trip to the Elmdale store.  Actually it was something of a necessity,.  We didn’t have a electricity, so we didn’t have a refrigerator, and if we wanted to keep things cold we had to buy ice.   The stores sold a lot of ice in July and August.

Raymond and I had something else in mind when my parents asked, “What would you boys like us to bring from the store?”  We were very specific about our order.  We wanted an ice cold R C Cola.  We liked R C’s because you got 12 full ounces.  Coca-Cola shortchanged you by giving you only 7 ounces.   Raymond showed me how to enhance the RC experience.   For a nickel, you could buy a package of Tom’s peanuts, pour them into the R C, shake it up and let the fizz rise to the top and try to drink the whole mess.  Oh, man was that ever good.

Raymond married Sherry Herod on July 21, 1956.   I’ve known their son David for quite awhile.  I also keep in touch with his daughter, Diana Cowen.  His other sons are Terry and Lester.   Unfortunately, I’m not up to date on all their spouses and children’s name.  David’s wife is named Billie and Terry’s wife is Sheila. In 2010, we made a visit to Texas, and I visited Raymond three times – twice in the hospital at Hamilton.  Raymond died shortly after we got back home.  Sherry has gone the second and third mile in looking after members of the Lane family as they aged.   She has a big heart and I appreciate the cohesiveness she brings to our family.

Raymond Earl Lane – the Big Brother I Never Had

Raymond was the youngest of the Lane children.  He was born on July 29, 1932, which makes him a little more than three years older than me.    It’s a little unusual to have an uncle who is also your peer.  As an only child I was a pretty naïve kid, so Raymond took it on himself to expose me to the wider world, the one the adults didn’t want us to see.  He had the world figured out before I did and considered it his responsibility to educate me.  I played with him, wore his hand-me-down clothes, and probably got in trouble with him from time to time.  He used to have a guitar, and he wasn’t playing it anymore, and I wanted it so bad I could taste it.   I think my parents gave Raymond $5.00 for it.  After awhile I learned three chords and I’ve never stopped playing since.  I guess I can blame Raymond for that part of my waywardness.

I recall a couple of incidents prior to the time I started to school that involved Raymond.  The first was hog killing.   In those depression days, hog killing was just a normal part of living.   You didn’t buy your bacon at the supermarket.

 I couldn’t handle watching them kill the hog, but then I got really interested as they began the butchering process.   Raymond talked them out of a part of the entrails – the bladder I think.   Somehow he fixed it so that he could make a ball out of it and we threw the ball around that afternoon.   We really did play with the pigskin, or at least the pig guts.

But the biggest day I had with Raymond, prior to the time I started to school, was the day I was allowed to go to school with him.  I was 5 and he was 8.    I spent the whole day in school and thought it was absolutely fascinating.  I couldn’t wait for the next year to come when I would be able to go to school.   I remember the desks, the teacher and the blackboard.    It was all very fascinating.  The teacher talked about the Eskimos.  I’m not sure I had heard of Eskimos prior to that time, but it was very interesting to me.   She told how they lived in houses called igloos.  She had run off some pictures of igloos on a hectograph machine (sort of a hand operated copy machine that used a messy jelly substance.  Be thankful you don’t have to use them today).  She gave me one of the pictures to color, but I remember that I was totally unable to stay within the lines.   I’m glad that adults don’t have to qualify for jobs by staying within the lines, because I still have trouble doing that.

Annie Loretta - The Family Artist

Annie Loretta was born on July 8, 1924 at the “Banks Place” near Falls Creek about five miles southeast of Hico.   Last year Jack, Jean and I drove to Falls Creek and we think we may have found the house where she was born.  When she was four and a half, they moved to the “Holiday Place” and stayed there for one year.  It was about a half mile west of the “Home Place” which she identified as the “Powledge Place.”  She lived there from the time until she was 17.   

She wrote, “After graduation from Hico High School and after December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor) I moved a lot and held a conglomerate of jobs.   At Brownwood, I broke eggs to be dried for the armed forces.   I worked as an attendant for a Gulf Oil service station in San Antonio and I went to business school and worked at a flower shop.”  She was married to Ralph Cook in 1943.  Their son Ronny was born March 3, 1945.  The marriage ended in divorce in 1948.   Ronny died in a car crash in May, 1966.  A second son, Larry (Ross)  was born January 4, 1947.  Ross lives in Delaware.  He works as an inspector for a highway construction company.  I enjoy reading his Facebook postings.

She was subsequently married to Levi Holley in September, 1949.  Their son, James C. was born July 16, 1950 in Hico and their daughter Lettie Jo was born in January 1, 1959 in Waco.     Jim lives on the first farm Loretta and Levi bought.  He worked for 30 plus years with Southwestern Bell and spent two years in Viet Nam.   He married Gail Wade.  They have two girls, Kari and Kristal.  Kari the mother of Loretta’s first great grandchild, Haley Peterson.   Lettie Jo finished Texas A and M with a BA in Business Management.  She has two children from her second marriage – Holly (born in May, 1984 and Colt Fadal born in March, 1987). She also has a child named Dylan White, born in November, 1996 from her marriage to Danny White.  She is divorced and raising her children alone.

Loretta’s husband, Levi, died of a heart attack when he was 57.  They had moved to a farm near Waco (the one Jim lives on).  Later they bought additional acreage and built a house on it where Loretta lived until her death in 2009.   After Ronnie’s death, Loretta enrolled in art classes and later taught art.   She gave it up for awhile and then resumed painting in later life.  She was enormously talented as an artist.   We proudly display some of her work in our home.

 I can remember when I was a young boy attending a program at Hico High School.   Loretta was in some kind of musical program at school and I still remember her singing a song called “Doing What Comes Naturally.”   It’s strange how stuff like that sticks in my mind.  

I was honored to be asked to speak at the graveside service for Loretta when she died. There were a number of years that I didn't have much contact with her, but during the last ten years of her life, I often visited with her when we went to see Ann's sisters in Waco.

Eugene Preston Lane - Oil Explorer

Eugene Preston was born on January 20, 1920 in Duffau (near Hico). He was married to Wanda Cates on March 29, 1954, but the marriage ended a little more than three years later on May 29, 1957. They had no children.

We always called him Eugene, but in later years, he was known simply as Gene. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, but most, if not all his service, was state side. I remember him being at Laredo, Texas for a long period of time. After the War, Gene worked in oil exploration. His job took him from Mexico to Canada to the Australian outback and many other places including Peru, Brazil, Libya, Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines.

His high school graduation was the first graduation I ever remember attending. Loretta, his younger sister, said they fought a lot when they were growing up but drew close to one another in later life during his illness. When he retired from the relentless search for petroleum, he moved to Fort Worth. He died of lung cancer in a Glen Rose, Texas nursing home on October 17, 1994.

I especially remember that Gene and Durward, along with Pauline took the lead in getting my mother admitted to the state hospital in Galveston when her mental problems first surfaced in 1947. They were very concerned about her and did what they could to help.