Mr. Robinson

One afternoon, when I was nine or ten years old, three of my friends and I were walking past the grocery store. The owner, Mr. Robinson, came out the front and called us to come to the store. He had a Hershey bar, the first we had ever seen. In those days, candy was hard to come by, and anything chocolate was a rare treat. He broke off one of the little squares for each of us and told us to put it on our tongues and let it melt slowly. That was the best tasting candy I had ever eaten.

Every afternoon after that, the four of us would just happen to go by Mr. Robinson’s store and stand in front, hoping he would come out with the candy. He did until the Hershey bar was gone. He told us that was all he had. He’d received only one bar and he’d shared it with us. Sometimes, one little act of kindness can make a person remember you for the rest of their life.

Credit Lake

Jayton, Texas

There is a pond in Jayton, located between downtown and the public school. Strangers hearing the locals talk about Credit Lake often ask how it got its name. Here’s what we were told.

The fifties in West Texas were, as the author, Elmer Kelton, said, “The time it never rained.” Jayton’s banker lived on the other side of the pond and walked to the bank every morning. He went by the pond again on the way home at night.

It is said the farmers named the pond. They learned that the banker looked at the pond every day and if it had water in it, they got a loan to farm that year. If the pond was dry, no credit at the bank.

Thus, to this day, the pond is called Credit Lake.

Almost every boy in Jayton learned to swim in Credit Lake, as there were no swimming pools. It was brown muddy water, but young boys don’t care.

In the winter when Credit Lake froze, that was where the kids skated. Nobody had ice skates, but if you ran and jumped on the ice, you could glide several feet, that is, if you didn’t fall.

One winter there was snow on the ground and ice on Credit Lake. One of the kids found an old hood to a Plymouth car. He tied a rope on it, the boys piled on, and he pulled it with his dad’s old car. When he got to the pond he would turn sharply and release the rope, the hood of the car loaded with boys would go spinning across the ice, usually dumping several. We considered that great fun.

Then the boy decided the ice was thick enough and drove out on it in the car. He could get up speed, turn the wheel, and do circles or slide sideways, that is, until he stopped in the middle. There was a cracking sound and the boys that were in the car jumped out, including the driver, and ran to safety. The boys who were riding on the hood of the car were close behind. They stood on the bank and watched in total dismay as the car started slowly sinking until only the top of the car could be seen.

His daddy pulled the car out of Credit Lake with a tractor as soon as the ice melted. However, the next day at school, the boy grimaced every time he sat down, but he learned a very valuable lesson, never drive on the ice of Credit Lake. In fact, it was several months before he got to drive again.

There have been improvements to Credit Lake now, making it a park area. It has been stocked with fish and at times people bring fish in and turn them loose for the kids to catch. One afternoon, I was driving by Credit Lake and saw a boy about 7 or 8 running down the street toward home. He had a huge fish clutched in his arms holding it across his chest. His Zebco rod and reel were dragging along behind and his dog was chasing the boy barking in excitement. The smile on the kid’s face was a mile wide. I expect that family had fish for supper than night.

Life is not always dull in a rural West Texas town, and it’s a great place to raise kids. 

GROWING UP IN WEST TEXAS DURING WORLD WAR II

Some people have asked what it was like growing up in the country in West Texas back in the good ol’ days. I also wanted to write these things down for the kids and grandkids. So, I thought I would start posting my memories.

I was in elementary school in Kent County, TX, during World War II. To say we were poor would be an understatement.  As the old saying goes, you could have thrown a cat through the cracks in the walls of our home. No one had money to buy much of anything. We grew most of what we ate. We canned vegetables and fruit and butchered animals. We wore clothing until they almost fell off. Everything was handed down in the family, and then from family to family within the community. We bought only necessities. Merchandise was rationed. We had government issued ration stamps that gave us permission to buy a limited amount of various products, including some foods, gasoline, tires, and so forth. Everything went to the war effort. With so many men gone to war, the economy was rough in the rural areas and paying jobs were scarce. The jobs were in the cities.

Dad had lost his leg to osteomyelitis, caused by a high-jumping accident during high school when his pole broke and he fell on the pole bruising and injuring the bone just below the knee. A very treatable injury today, but back then, amputation was the only way to fight the resulting infection. Consequently, he wasn’t able to go to war. He was elected as county treasurer, which left us better off than some in our community during the war. But nobody had much money.

There was no electricity in Kent County because the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), a government funded program to bring electricity to rural areas, had yet to put up poles in our area. Basic living for us hadn’t changed much since the 1800s.

Well water was scarce, there was no drilling equipment at that time and wells were hand dug, so we had only cistern water. Water was put in the cistern using guttering around the house to catch rainwater. During August when it was so hot and dry, I drew buckets of water from the cistern and poured it through cheesecloth to strain out the wiggle-tails and trash. Then the water went into the house for cooking and drinking. We all bathed in a #2 washtub using the same water and then it was carried out to put on the garden.

As we had no indoor plumbing, we had an outhouse. Dad had a battery-powered radio with a wire strung from the top of the house to the top of the outhouse as an antenna to listen to the war reports at night. We used coal-oil lamps for lights and Mom cooked on a kerosene stove. That was also the only heat in the house.

In winter, Mom would put my twin brother and me to bed and cover us with so many patchwork quilts that we were trapped there until morning, as we couldn’t get up or turn over because of the weight.

We went to a two-room schoolhouse. Of course, there was no water or electricity. Grades 1-7 were in one room and the upper grades in the other room. There was a big round cast iron coal or wood burning stove in the middle of the room for heat. Lighting came from windows on three sides of our room. 

There were two outhouses, one for girls and one for boys. There was no playground equipment. The younger girls played hopscotch or jacks. The older boys went to the corral to mess with the horses. The younger boys played mumbley-peg, tops, or ante-over. We had an old rubber ball and the boys divided into two equal groups and went to different sides of the building. The ball would be thrown over the top of the school and the boy on the other side who caught it would run around the building and try to hit a boy. If he was hit, he was out of the game. That went on until there was only one left, the winner.

There were no buses; kids came in riding in a buggy or wagon. But most rode horseback. My brother and I rode an old gray mule. Mom was a schoolteacher. She taught the older kids and was paid in scrip, as the school had no money. The grocery store finally stopped taking it for payment for food, as the grocer couldn’t exchange the scrip for money. I still have some of it.

We took our lunch in a sack along with a jug of water. The boy who got the most gold stars during the day for being good, got to take out the ashes from the stove and bring in a bucket of coal as long as the coal lasted. After that, parents or boys brought stumps in to burn. The best girl got to take the erasers out and dust them on the porch. What a reward, but it worked.

One afternoon, we heard screaming in the room for the older kids. We all ran to see what had happened. Mom had opened a map that was in a roll and a rattler fell out the end. He’d chosen that place to spend the winter. The boys killed it with a rock they used to hold the door open on warm days.

Yeah, this was the good ol’ days.

The latest release in my Mountain Woman Adventures series, Danger at Wolf Canyon, is now available in paperback. 

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Bad things are happening in the town of Wolf Canyon. The citizens are being terrorized by their own corrupt lawmen and a crooked judge. After a US marshal sent to investigate these claims of brutality is murdered, Kate decides to pose as a bounty hunter and find out what's going on. What she uncovers is an even bigger conspiracy with ties to Washington, DC. Realizing she can’t deal with this situation on her own, an army of marshals is called in to help.

In Book 6 of the Mountain Woman Adventures series, Kate and her marshals must outmaneuver a vicious horde of mercenaries and bring down the clever mastermind if they hope to restore true law and order for the people of Wolf Canyon.