The Unpainted House

ROAD TO MY BIRTHPLACE

The house where I was born no longer stands.   In 2010 I found the road that led to it.   The present owners of the property have placed a large metal gate across the road and it’s locked, so I didn’t get any closer than that.  While I don’t remember living there, I can recall that we visited it a few times when I was a child.  

It was just an old farmhouse without any paint on the walls.  Daddy was a sharecropper.  Sharecroppers’ houses didn’t have paint on them. I enjoyed reading The Painted House by John Grisham.  Grisham’s book describes life in Northeastern Arkansas during the fifties.   The continuing story line involves a seven-year-old boy who wants to see his mother fulfill her lifelong dream of living in a painted house.  Although we lived in that house in the thirties, I suspect my mother would have been a great deal like the lady in the home – longing for something better, but having to settle for a run down sharecroppers shack.

I was born around 10 o’clock in the evening and sometime after that they settled down to try to get some rest, during the remainder of the night.  My parents were too poor to afford a crib, so they placed me on a pillow by the side of their bed.  According to them, I almost fell off.  My crying woke them up and they rescued me.    That wasn’t the only close call I had during  the first few days of life.     I couldn’t tolerate my mother’s milk nor could I tolerate the milk from our family cow.   There was no formula available in those days, and if there had been, they wouldn’t haven able to afford it.  I was in danger of starving to death.  Infant mortality was high in those days.  My aunt Melba once told me that they were all poor, but my mother and father were poorer than most.

They did have farm animals, which included milk cows.  My grandparents also had  a milk cow or two, so they tried milk from their cows.  Whether my body got strong enough to accept cow’s milk or whether they found the right cow, I’ll never know.  I do know that I was finally able to drink the milk from my grandfather’s cow, so they simply traded cows.   Just think I’m probably alive today because of a cattle trade.  

1935 - The Year of My Nativity

In 1935 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific when she piloted her plane from Honolulu to Oakland, California.   John Steinbeck’s book Tortilla Flats came out that year.   The lie detector machine was first demonstrated by Leonard Keeler.  Mussolini sent troops into East Africa.  Robert Sherwood’s play, The Petrified Forest opened on Broadway with Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard in the lead roles.  The Detroit Tigers defeated the Chicago Cubs in a six game World Series. Jay Berwanger won the first Heisman award.  In June of that year Congress passed a law making it possible for immigrants to the United States, who were otherwise ineligible for citizenship, to become naturalized citizens if they served in the United States military services during the World War (later to become thought of as World War I).

I arrived on June 21.  Mama and Daddy were living in an old farmhouse in what was then known as the “Paramour Place.”  In 2002 I visited the church in Hico, Texas and talked with a person who has lived her entire life in Hico.   She said, “You were born down near Langston Crossing weren’t you?”   Well as a matter of fact I was.  Langston Crossing is a low water place where the road crossed the Bosque River.  I was surprised that anybody would know that much about me.

 Like most babies who were born in 1935, I was born at home.   Those were depression days.  Very few people could afford to give birth to babies in a sterile hospital environment.  The old time doctors made house calls and did the best they could with whatever was available.  When it was time my Daddy called Dr. A. N. Pike from Iredell.  He probably went to town and got him because they didn’t have a telephone.  When Dr. Pike filled out the birth certificate, he identified Iredell as my place of birth.   However, my parents lived on a Hico mail route, so the place of my birth has been up for dispute as have a lot of other things about me.  When I applied for a passport a few years ago, I just gave Bosque County as my birthplace.  How's that for not knowing where you were born?

The Marriage of Burl and Ruby - 1934

Burl Bales and Ruby Lane met late in 1933.  There weren't many jobs around Hico, but there were a few people of means who were still able to afford a turkey dinner for Christmas.   Burl and Ruby both found temporary employment plucking the feathers from the dead turkeys that were scheduled to be served on Christmas dinner tables.  They didn't get much money for their efforts, but that was where the two of them met.

A very brief courtship followed.  Sometime in January of 1934, they decided to marry.   They never told me how they made the decision.  Papa had a lot of mouths to feed during the depression, and my mother was anxious to get out on her own.   Daddy was lonely and tired of eating his own cooking.  He was a terrible cook.  He once served me a jackrabbit that he killed and cooked.   I had two experiences with that jackrabbit.  It was my first and my last.

Daddy was considered an “eligible bachelor” and everyone was trying to hook him up with somebody.  Stanley Gieseke was the preacher for the Hico Church of Christ, and he told Daddy that he would do the ceremony for nothing if we ever found a wife.  The county clerk even offered him a free license.  By this time Murl had married Etta Mae Latimer, so Daddy was batching it on his own.

They decided to marry on January 19, 1934.   Daddy took Stanley up on his offer to perform a free wedding.   He reminded the county clerk of his free license offer, so they got married moved into their new home.  I'm not sure exactly where they lived when they were first married.

I do know that there was a custom among the people of that area to “shivaree” a newly married couple, which usually meant a dunking in the horse trough.   It was January, and Daddy had no intention of their getting dunked in the horse trough.  He issued threats to all of his so-called friends. He was known to display a high temper, and he was not above getting physical with his fists.  He had something of a reputation as a boxer (at least according to his own accounts).    His buddies must have believed him because they passed on the shivaree. 

Ruby Lois Lane - 1908-1980

A Young Methodist Lass

Mama grew up in the Methodist church.   From what I’ve learned, I think she was a fairly devoted Methodist.   Then she met this “Campbellite” farmer who preached on the side.    ( We can call ourselves that, but we don’t like it when we hear it from others).  Before their marriage, Daddy had been asked to preach for the church at Fairy, a little community near Hico.   He was a confirmed old bachelor (all of about 26), but he showed up for church one Sunday with his new lady friend.   It’s was a pretty tight knit community, so everybody knew everybody else, and they knew everybody else's business.   So the word got around pretty quickly that the preacher’s new girl friend was a Methodist.   I can imagine they were probably polite, but somewhat standoffish, and if I know people, they were probably conversing about her faults when the young couple was out of earshot.   

Daddy was really smitten with his young follower of John Wesley, whose father actually bore the name of the famous English preacher.   Daddy wanted to show her off.   The crucial moment came when he was paid for his preaching.   I have no idea how much he was paid.  It couldn’t have been much. These were depression times.   Five dollars would have been an enormous salary for a preacher who only came on Sunday.   It was probably less than that.   Apparently they paid him out of the offering, which I take it was mostly change.    As he told it, they gave him the money in a bag.   He simply tossed it to Mama.  It was his idea of showing her how much he cared.  Of course she was very pleased.   That was a little too much for the Fairy leadership to take.    They relieved him of his pulpit responsibilities.    But he didn’t care.   If they didn’t want Ruby, they couldn’t have him anyway.  He was smitten.

Within a short time, he baptized her and eventually some other members of her family.   However, I will say this about my mother.  While she fully believed things taught among Churches of Christ, understood them, and vigorously promoted them, she retained a soft spot in her heart for the Methodist church – especially the experiences of her youth in her Methodist upbringing, and for the Methodist people.  She never spoke disparagingly of them.  

It’s strange how that influences a person.   When I lived in Shreveport, I worked out at a local gym.   During that time, I’ve come to know Pat Day, who was the pastor of the largest Methodist church in Shreveport.   Pat and I often arrived and left about the same time, so we conversed while we were changing clothes. Pat has more than a passing acquaintance with the Churches of Christ, and he is a native Texan, so we developed a quite cordial relationship.   Maybe I’ve got a little soft spot in my heart for the Methodists too.   Rarely did I ever talk with Pat without thinking of Mama.

Ruby Lois Lane Bales 1908 – 1980

Graduation Picture - Hico High School - 1927

Disappointments

I’ll have to admit that I was a little reluctant to include the story I’m about to tell.  It’s a sad thing, but it explains some of the trials she faced in life.  For a long time I never knew how her employment with the Jewish family in Fort Worth ended.  This is the story that Melba, her sister, told me several years after Mama’s death.  

Her chores included washing and ironing.  Of course this was long before the time of colorfast fabrics.    One day she hung up a brown sock with a blue sock.   The colors merged and she was fired for that indiscretion.  I’m sure there were plenty of young women looking for jobs in Fort Worth in those days, so the family apparently didn’t give a second thought to replacing their housekeeper.    She had no choice but to return to Hico.   According to Melba, Papa was a little bit more than upset.  He still had plenty of younger mouths to feed, and times were hard.

When she returned home, her younger sister, Loretta was a small girl and Mama took her under her wing.  Loretta looked up to her big sister and was very close to her.   Of course big sister could also be a stern disciplinarian when she had to.  Once she heard Loretta using certain words that Papa had spoken to his mules.  Loretta got her mouth washed out with soap.  She said that she never forgave my Daddy for taking Ruby away from her.  She loved my mother dearly.  I enjoyed a good relationship with Loretta during her last years, and was privileged to speak at the graveside service when she died.

I don’t really know, but I wonder if combination of the depression, the loss of the job in Fort Worth, the anger of her father, and perhaps her mother, and her inability to find work in Hico contributed to her mental illness later on.  It’s hard to say.    Looking back on it, I’m very certain she suffered bouts of depression over a long period of years, but I was really too young to recognize it.  I do recall coming a time when we had just come back to the farm after a trip into town and her eyes began the swell, so much that she couldn’t see for awhile.   Mental illness, or at least our awareness of it, did not surface until a few years later.    Mental illness is a terrible thing.  I may have more to say on that subject at a later time.  

I’ve never known exactly what triggered it in my mother.   I gave some thought to studying psychology in college because of her condition, but I was turned off by an inept professor in a basic course.  From what I know in the studies I’ve done, she appears to have suffered from schizophrenic paranoia from the time that she was about 35 years old until the end of her life.  Supposedly it runs in families, but I’ve never known anyone else to have these same symptoms.  The episodes came and went.   Sometimes she would revert to her normal self, although she became more withdrawn and reclusive as time went on.    People, who only came to know her in later life, would never have dream that she was once a socially active person.  Loretta remembered her spending a lot of time day dreaming during her early adult years.  She thought Mama had expectations from life and when it didn’t materialize, things went downhill for her.

During the last three weeks of her life her mind reverted to normal thinking.  I got to spend those three weeks with her.  It was a wonderful time in terms of our own relationship with each other.  She knew what she was up against.  I never saw anyone face death with more confidence, with a greater sense of peace, and with what appeared to be a total absence of fear.  How I admire her for that.

Ruby Lois Lane - 1908-1980

Early Years

I've said a few things about my mother already.  I want to add a few additional comments. 

My mother was born in Clairette, Texas on April 30, 1908.  Clairette was wide place in the road a few miles west of Hico near the Bosque River.   Hico is located southwest of Fort Worth.  She was raised around the Hico area and lived there until her graduation from Hico High School in 1927. 

Daddy was a big story teller and full of anecdotes about his childhood.  Mama was a quiet person and didn’t say all that much.  Information is a good bit sketchier about Mama’s early life.

Mama was the valedictorian of her class at Hico High School.   Upon her graduation she was offered a scholarship to the University of Texas.   I’ve seen a copy of the grant, although I don’t think I still have it.   In those days I guess people didn’t think education was all that important for a girl.   I’ve been told that my grandfather wouldn’t let her go to the university.   I guess that’s just as well with me.    I probably never would have been born had she married some bright campus dude with a Model A convertible and a raccoon coat.   He might have been a boring stockbroker from Austin or somewhere.

She belonged to the flapper era, although I never heard her use expressions like “23 skidoo” and “Oh you kid.”  She ended up at Brantley-Draughon Business College in Fort Worth.   Unlike my father, she took her studies seriously, and she became an accomplished typist and stenographer.   In later life she suffered from mental illness, but she never forgot how to write in shorthand.  Upon graduation she took a job with what we today would call as savings and loan bank in Fort Worth.   Things apparently went well for a while, but the job with the savings and loan bank went away with the onset of the depression.

She found a job as a housekeeper for a wealthy Jewish family, and she used to talk about that experience.  I wish I had paid closer attention.  For some reason, I remember her telling me about taking the rugs out to the clothesline and beating the dust out of them.  Vacuum cleaners were pretty rare in those days, even in wealthy families.  Eventually, they let her go and she had to return home to Hico.

She liked to talk about Fort Worth.  When I was about ten, she took me there.  New York City couldn’t have been bigger in my eyes.  Fort Worth may have been known as Cowtown, but I never saw the stockyards until I was 60 years old.  To her the heart of Fort Worth was downtown and the nerve center of that was  Leonard’s Department store.  She took me there.  The highlight of the trip was lunch at the store’s cafeteria in the basement.  I had never seen a cafeteria before.   She showed me how to get my lunch.  I remember that it cost me 29 cents.

At some point in her early life (I think it must have been during the Fort Worth years), she and a friend took a trip to Oklahoma City.  It was the only time in her entire life she would travel outside the borders of the state of Texas.  She retained picture post cards from that trip for a long time.  I remember seeing them up into my teens.    She liked to talk about her travel to Oklahoma.  I think she would have enjoyed travel as much as I have, but she never got the opportunity.