MEMORIES of HOME
By Betty Anne Belt Sadler
Our house on the street now called Roosevelt.The house when I was old enough to remember contained a front
room that was rarely used, a front bedroom for mother and
dad, a room where most of the "living" occurred
(we played, studied, and "lived"), a room big enough
for three double beds was for the sisters, a small room next
to the kitchen for Morris and the kitchen. The kitchen and
the room used to everything were the only two with heat. When
I was very little the bathroom had a #2 washtub for bathing,
later replaced by a tub, commode, and running water. This
came only after Morris tipped over the outdoor john and gas
was available.
We spent a lot of time outside when it was warm enough The
wood stoves and an icebox were replace with an electric refrigerator
and a gas stove before we moved to Beaumont.
The sisters shared one closet and one chest of drawers; each
of use had a drawer.
We just needed one because we didn't have a lot to put in
it.
Our house had a covered front porch the width of the house
and a smaller porch on the back. We often played under the
porch.
Mother and Daddy owned five acres of land. The large back
yard included a wash house, clothes lines and room to play.
On washdays (Mondays) Mother occasionally had some help. The
young Black woman brought her two little children and we had
a wonderful time playing with them. One of them was named
Lucy John. There is a family story that one day when daddy
was leaving for work, one of us said, "Kiss, Lucy John,
too."
The rest of the land was fenced in and contained black berry
bushes, some fruit trees, and some land under cultivation
which was worked on a shared basis by a neighbor. The rest
of the land was kinda wild, but I remember a willow tree that
was great for riding.
I was born in 1929 and by the time I was old enough to be
aware, the Great Depression had hit the entire country. We
were poor but we did not know it because everyone was poor.
At Thanksgiving we gave to "the poor" so there were
those much worse off than we.
Occasionally a "tramp" (a jobless man) would stop
by and ask to work for a meal. Mother never turned one away.
She gave them whatever we had. I remember sitting with one
on the back steps. He told me he had a little girl at home
about my size. I was confused about why he wasn't home with
her.
Railroading was a dangerous job. I When I was in the first
grade, daddy got a small wound in an accident in which others
were more seriously hurt. The "scratch" developed
"blood poisoning" and he spent almost a year in
the hospital. (Only to have it finally heal when I was a sophomore
in college.) The day an ambulance took him to Temple to the
company hospital, I fell against a wooden step and knock a
couple of vertebra out of line causing my right side to become
pretty useless. A Beaumont chiropractor manipulated them back
in place, but I missed most of the school year and so I went
to the first grade again.
Mother was a gifted pianist and played for the church and
other organizations. We children sat behind her as she played
at church and if we needed correction, she would reach behind
her and give the offender a pinch. When she pinched us, we
knew we had been pinched. (Uncle Bear, dad's brother, was
a pincher too, but playfully. We called him our "pinchingest"
uncle.) Daddy was babysitting one evening while mother went
to an American Legion Auxiliary meeting. This was before good
weather reporting and no one anticipated the hurricane on
its way. Well, the wind gusted and the rain poured and all
kinds of weather noises had dad worried. He paced the floor,
went our on the porch and searched the darkness. (The only
phone in the neighborhood was at Ma Smith's about a half block
away.) Finally, daddy heard a car pull into the driveway and
a horn sounded. Still full of worry, he went to the porch.
Mother rolled down the car window and said, "Where shall
I put the car?" Dad replied in relief, I guess, "In
the damn garage."
Mother had asked because the garage had been overturned by
the wind. Mother and daddy wanted extras for us and they traded mother's
piano skills for music and dancing lessons. Mother also sewed
costumes for material for her children's costumes. (She also
made dressed for friends in return for material for dresses
for us, and she could take the out of date clothing stock
from granddad Taylor's store and remake frock for us.)
There was always some kind of game (or several) going on
in the neighborhood: baseball, marbles, and kite flying to
name a few. We made our own kites out of newspaper, flour
paste and sticks. We craw fished and picked berries in addition
to playing with doll, tops, hopscotch, baseball, and kick
the can.
I am sure someone will write about
- the swimming pool we attempted one summer.
- the shoe Nancy threw at Morris as I was unfortunate enough
to stand up in time to get hit.
- the walks to school
- Nancy and Morris going to the Dallas centennial
- riding the train to Aunt "Bun's" in Louisiana,
taking a lunch but want to eat it before we left town.
But a couple of special memories of mine: Going with mother to visit daddy in Temple, being taken to
the doctor's office in back of the drug store, performing
memory work at a high school program, and drawing mother's
wining number for a bicycle.
I am including separately if Nan wants to use it, a complete
version of the bicycle drawing as I remember it and a sketch
of my dad. I am including the latter because I have always
regretted that my kids did not know daddy when he was younger.
He was sixteen years older than mother so was beyond his prime
when the grandchildren arrived
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