Before
she passed away, Opal Young sat down with a pencil and a tablet and left for her
family the recollections of growing up in rural East
Texas. Her son Coleman Standley of Lufkin
shared her memories with me recently--and I spent an evening enthralled by how
hard life was for families in those days.
School busses were rare in Opal’s
school days, so she and her fellow students rode to school in a wagon pulled by
four horses. Benches were built into the wagon’s bed, along with curtains which
were rolled down in bad weather. The wagon carried the students four miles each
way.
The school later bought a truck with the same bed. But the roads were
often muddy and the truck stuck in the mud, and the horse-drawn wagon soon returned.
Opal’s school was located at Helmic, near a Trinity Lumber Company mill, but soon
moved to another lumbering camp.
Students at her school played basketball
and baseball. The ball used by the baseball players was made of old socks. Gloves
were rare and Opal once caught a ball bare-handed and broke her thumb. A teacher
yanked on the thumb and pulled it back in place.
Summers were filled with
work around the family farm. Opal, only ten, plowed with Pete, a family mule,
planted cotton and corn,
chopped weeds in the rows, and harvested the crops. She often had to miss school
to work the crops because they were essential to the family. She also had to kill
hogs for meat on the table and picked bugs off tobacco grown by her father for
chewing and smoking.
A cranky mailman once told Opal’s mother to stop her
children from dashing out to the mailbox before he drove off. Irritated by his
action, Opal put a cat in the mailbox. When the mailman opened the box, the cat
jumped out and frightened the mailman’s horse.
Opal’s mother died in 1994
at the age of 99 and Opal passed away in February of 2009.
Bob
Bowman's East Texas
September 12, 2010Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers |
