As Experienced by Carolyn, Judy, and Arlene1. Candy Bars on the Curb
Living across Walnut Street from Hugh Phillips’ grocery, the trio would occasionally, as a special treat, receive a nickel each to cross the street and buy a candy bar. They would return to sit on the curb and eat them together. (Those who know bet Carolyn--see photo at left--always got a Butterfinger, ate the chocolate off the outside, and then finished the inside.)
2. Olives and JuiceHugh Phillips also sold, like all grocers of the day, green pitted olives in glass bottles about an inch and a half wide and six or seven inches tall. When they weren’t buying candy bars, the girls would buy a bottle of olives each, eat the olives, and drink “the juice.” (AKA vinegar)
3. “Sentimental Journey”
The Walnut Street house was a two storey, and the stairway was enclosed. The girls would pretend that the stairs were seats on a train and sing their three part rendition of “Sentimental Journey,” and they can still do it today.
4. Live! On Stage!
Once upstairs, the trio found a two foot high window seat / storage area to be a perfect stage and would rehearse and perform there for their mothers. Some years later in that same second floor venue, Carolyn would play the role of opponent, target, ball girl, and, in general, adoring little sister when Milton practiced ping pong.
5. Magical Mashings for Milton
Speaking of Milton, Judy (above, right) and Arlene (above, left) remember at time when he would not eat beans and cornbread unless Carolyn mashed them up for him on his plate. (And from a later era: on Milton’s wedding day, he was nervously rushing to get dressed and ready when he discovered that his mother had sewn the legs of his boxer shorts together.)
6. Heavy Cold
In that same Walnut Street attic, the trio remember sleeping together in the winter when they were immobilized by six quilts and blankets and still cold.
7. Oscillating Heat
In the summer, it was so hot in Hillsboro that no one could sleep upstairs. The girls remember waiting breathless for the oscillating fan to bring its breeze across their piece of the foldout couch bed downstairs on Walnut Street.
8. Cooling Down
Coming in from playing outside in other summers, they would stand three abreast in front of the evaporative cooler in the window, looking out the window, hot, sweaty, tired, and happy.
9. Mirrored Giggles
They also stood together in front of a large round mirror on a dresser trying to practice their singing together. And giggling so hard and so often they could not sing a note. (Steve and his buddy Glen had the same trouble practicing “Baby Talk” decades later in a church restroom that must have had some of the same acoustical properties as the Walnut Street stairway.)
10. Giggles of Disaster
Arlene and Ila Mae (their usual accompanist) were not present one evening for worship at Line Street Methodist when Carolyn and Judy performed a duet for a service being broadcast on radio KHBR. The substitute accompanist began missing notes, and the duo began to giggle. And continued through the end of the song before running straight out of church in humiliation.
11. Life at the Table
In a big family, there was seldom room for everyone at the dinner table. But the memory of life around that family table was warmth and joy and beans (butter beans or red beans) and buttered cornbread (mashed together), fresh tomatoes (carefully sliced and peeled), fresh green onions, and boiled potatoes. Though Daddy was a butcher, meat was not the centerpiece.
12. Life at the Table: Round Two
It was usually the custom, because there was not room for all, for the men and boys to eat first. That left the table to the women and girls to finish up and sit together and talk. And while they talked, the girls remember, the last bite of every meal was a spoonful of ice, lightly salted.
13. Cornbread and Grace
The women and girls would sit together after meals, eat salted ice, and talk. But maybe they weren’t so clear about passing down the family recipes. When there mothers were away at lunchtime one day, the enterprising trio fixed lunch for Daddy /Granddaddy, including cornbread from scratch. Alas, they used baking soda instead of baking powder, leaving the cornbread flat and nasty. When served the disastrous traditional dish, their gracious dinner guest choked it down and said, “Mmmm. That’s good.”
13.1 Cornbread and First Impressions
Decades later, Maria Jose sat down to her meal at the Benton family home (which she reported to her family at home later was like living in a Broadway musical because at any time and for no apparent reason one or more Bentons might burst into song). She was served cornbread, of course, and fresh purple hull peas. One by one, fork after fork around the table, she and the others discovered that, receiving an unexpected phone call from a Hillsboro boy friend (not boyfriend she says) during the mixing of the cornbread, Carolyn had added – who knows for sure? – five to ten times the amount of salt needed! Maria Jose gamely and graciously tried the graceful reply (see 13. above), but there was too much sputtering and reaching for water to make it stick.
14. Matinee Bargains
There was a single movie theatre in Hillsboro, and occasionally the girls were given ten cents – nine cents to get into the theater with a penny left over for a gumball. (Another movie memory for Carolyn was, years later and at a much higher price, seeing Vincent Price’s “House of Wax.” She still sees scenes of it in an occasional nightmare for free.)
15. Big Brother Was Watching
When the girls watched black and white movies at home on the tiny, rounded screen of their early television set, they were never alone. At the saddest, most heart-wrenching moments, big brother / uncle Cecil would rush to the kitchen and return just in the nick of time – with a dishpan to catch the tears. (At other times, he would simply announce on cue, “Tear check!”)
16. Hillsboro Happy Days
When they were somewhat older, the girls remember going to the movies, and then – without fail – cruising down the street to Tacker’s (Hillsboro’s version of Arnold’s) Drive-In for treats.
17. Down Park Hill
When the older brothers / uncles were not driving them to Tacker’s for a treat, they would drive the girls to the City Park. On the way, they would make a point of traveling by way of the dreaded “Park Hill.” At breakneck, life-threatening speed, they would careen down the near-vertical hill like a roller coaster without brakes. (Or so it seemed at the time.)
18. In the Floor
There’s another travel by car memory from the days when the little girls were little and the cars were not. Carolyn remembers the three of them riding on the floor of the backseat as their parents / grandparents drove down to San Antonio. It was not misery or punishment; it was fun! (Carolyn also remembers visiting family in Elm Mott and sitting outside on the porch of the un air-conditioned house, wiggling her toes into the dirt just beneath the porch and finding it cool and comforting.)
18.1 On the Road
Carolyn and her parents often took Sunday afternoon drives. Some Sundays they would “go visitin’,” and others they would just drive around and “see the sights.” It was on such trips as these that Carolyn noticed occasional stalks of corn or maize growing much higher than the rest of the plants in the fields. These she designated, “Freaks.” And she also remembers passing some cows and saying, “Look! That cow is climbing up on the back of the other one!”
19. At the Park
While grown-ups gathered to watch softball or eat watermelon in the City Park, the girls would play with dozens of other children on the swings and seesaws and other equipment there. They remember “Fruit Basket Turnover” in the shallow children’s swimming pool (Where did the deep children swim? At the same place the fast children are at play!) and Milton (the nearest brother / uncle to them in age) being able to walk the rotating barrel without falling.
20. Wonder Bugs
On summer nights at the City Park or in the yard at home, the girls remember fondly watching the abundant lightning bugs (AKA fireflies, glow worms, and Photuris lucicrescens) and catching them in clear bottles, poking holes in the lids, and celebrating their amazing light. (Another bug’s tale of the era involves little Carolyn alone: She went to the backyard to put some trash into a barrel where it would be burned. When she lifted the lid, she found dozens of bagworms (AKA evergreen bagworm and Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis). Horrified, she dropped the heavy lid on her hand, hastily pulled it loose, and ran to the house. She can show you today the small piece of ash from the lip of the barrel that remains embedded in her hand.)
21. Home Alone
It was a simpler, safer time back then, and, when a short shopping trip was called for, it was not unusual or dangerous to leave three responsible girls at home. And if they were good, they recall, sometimes their mothers or aunt /sister Elouise would bring home Dick Tracy color books or paper dolls!
22. Sharing Wash Day
Washing clothes was a different matter, too, back in the day. Not unlike Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing companions, the girls remember how much fun it was when Mother / Grandma was washing clothes on the back porch to get to stir the bluing with a stick. And there is a memorable photo of little Carolyn hanging doll clothes out to dry on an improvised clothesline.
23. Washing Those Men Right Out of Their Hair
On Saturday morning, all three girls and their grandma / mother would wash their hair and roll it up in pin curls fastened with bobby pins. They remember the pride and joy – and the womanly bond - of being in the house together as their hair dried. Four of them, together, doing what women do.
24. Men!
The men of the family (who were at work on those pin curl Saturdays) in an infamous story of good intentions gone awry brought a literal end to the family table. When Grandma / Mother was out of the house, Marvin, Troy, and Claude replaced her dining table with a brand new chrome and formica beauty. They took the wobbly, old, round solid walnut antique she had raised her children around to the city dump. She was madder than anyone can remember. As any woman would be!
25. Oh My!
There was a moment in family history which lives in infamy to this day, however, when Grandma / Mother did a notably unwomanly deed. It was one moment only, not repeated before or since, and thus, its place in family lore is unprecedented. As the story goes, she had cooked a pie and was removing it from the oven when something went wrong and it slipped from her hands and fell top down onto the kitchen floor. But that was not yet the moment to remember. As the ruined pie hit the ground, Mother / Grandma said, “Shit!” Out loud. For the first, last, and only time the three witnesses recall.
26. “Marvin!”
When any of the three girls tells a story about Grandma / Mother shushing or scolding her husband, she will include the one key word – “Marvin!” – pronounced in exactly the same way. With so many sleepovers, even with their girlish giggling, oscillating fan noises, and whispering, there are lots of these stories that happened in the dark of night. A repeated and familiar quote in the night responds to Granddaddy / Daddy’s loud snoring: “Marvin! Marvin! Roll over! Marvin! Good grief!” (Long after the girls moved to their own separate beds and houses, an audiotaped recording of family Christmas prepared one year for uncle / brother Gilbert stationed overseas closed with sounds of his daddy (Marvin) snoring.)
27. “Marvin! Marvin!”
The top of the line “Marvin!” in the night memory gallery is the Night of the Butter Beans. On this night, the three girls in one bed, stifled giggle after giggle after giggle as snores and gaseous blasts echoed through the night, each one followed by, “Marvin” or “Marvin! Good grief!” After some time Grandma / Mother made it four in the bed as she came to join the gigglers muttering, “That is the Last Time I am ever going to fix butter beans…” It was not. Another dropped pie story (see 23. above) evoked the same promise concerning the baking of pies for visiting sons and sons-in-law, but it was likewise dismissed at a later time. On the Night of the Butter Beans, however, there was no more giggling after she arrived.
28. Weinie Man
When Marvin was plying the meat cutter’s trade at B & J Grocery on Franklin St., the girls would often go grocery shopping with their mothers. While the women walked the aisles with their grocery carts, the girls would visit the meat counter. In exchange for a three part harmony rendition of “I Know a Weinie Man,” their favorite meat cutter would give each girl – what else? – a weinie. Sometimes, they remember receiving huge dill pickles from a jar at the meat counter, but what song those pickles rewarded remains lost to history.
29. Side-by-Side (-by Side)
Another treat during occasional shopping trips was a stop at Groves Ice Cream Store. There the trio would each order a Side-by-Side – two scoops served as the treat was named at the top of a single wide-topped cone. Then as now, the other two report, Carolyn always ordered vanilla and faithfully defended her perennial choice as she does to this day with – “It’s the best!” (At H & R Corner Drug Store, it was vanilla and chocolate sodas they were served. In tall glasses on spinning stools with red vinyl seats.)
30. Mountain Springs
Just east of Hillsboro was a spring-fed public pool named Mountain Springs (though the nearest real mountains were hundreds of miles away). Outside the kiddie pool at the bottom of Park Hill in the City Park, the girls were never the biggest fans of swimming, but Mountain Spring was still a fondly remembered hangout.
31. The Best
Carolyn was acknowledged by the other two as – like her vanilla – the best when it came to playing Jacks. Even now that her childhood age advantage has switched places (so to speak) and become an age disadvantage, no wise bettor would bet against her versus her childhood competitors or younger generations of family Jacks wannabes. (Carolyn also remembers pitching softball at recess in the fifth grade and being pretty good at it, and her piano teacher told her daddy that Carolyn didn’t need a teacher because she practiced so much and played so well. So he stopped the lessons.)
32. In Harmony
Around the piano at home (or in church or on their upstairs stage) there was no single best. Whether it was Ila Mae or Cecil or Milton at the piano, everybody sang, and everbody made the very best music and the very best memories. (By the way, Cecil, as it turns out, had a little more success on radio KHBR than Carolyn and Judy (See 10. above.). He played the piano and sang requests while hosting his own program that the girls remember listening to. Dreamily.)
33. Going On Record
Occasionally in the dim past, someone would bring home a recording device that would cut vinyl discs of family musical performances. The girls remember making such recordings and hearing at least one again as adults. When is someone going to relocate that treasure and record it in a more permanent form? Is it too late already? You can hear their close harmony live when they are together, but the little girls’ voices were still available not so very long ago.
34. The Band Played On
At Hillsboro High, each girl in turn became a saxophonist in the high school band beginning precociously in the eighth grade. By Carolyn’s senior year, she was drum major, and the others joined her in both the marching band and the stage band. And Daddy / Granddaddy drove the football team bus to ballgames! (A year or so later in Fort Worth, you would hear Arlene performing “Embraceable You” with the Paschal High School Stage Band.)
35. Summer on the Desk Top
A successful band doesn’t succeed on talent alone – even if it has access to the talented girls whose memories are recalled here. It takes hours and hours of practice before school, after school, and in the hot summer, too. One of the girls’ summer memories is making the band director’s wife furious by sitting on his desk. (Another memory of making people mad at HHS came the time Gilbert and friends stopped up the basement drains and turned on all the faucets…)
36. The Hustler
Back in the day, Hillsboro was county seat of a “dry” county where it was against the law to sell alcoholic beverages or serve them in public places. Along with alcohol, card playing was believed by many in Texas to be a little shady. Thus, the Hillsboro girls grew up drinking sody waters and playing dominoes. The men of the family always played “42” a higly simplified dominoes version of Bridge that required 4 players. The girls remember that Mother / Grandmother would occasionally fill the fourth spot at a “42” table when needed. After much coaxing and requisite demurring, saying, “I don’t even know how to play,” she’s sit down at the table, grab up four dominoes in one hand and three in the other like a pro and, as they remember it, win every time.
37. Around the Square
As the county seat, Hillsboro was the proud location of a limestone courthouse built in 1890 and surrounded by The Square.* As the girls remember it, all the streets around the square and approaching it were hung with overhead stars and garlands to prepare for the annual celebration of Christmas. For them it meant that soon all of the seven children and the grandchildren would gather at the family home for the most wonderful day of the year.
38. Family Christmas
What made Christmas the very best day of every year was never presents, it was family. This way the day when everyone – everyone! – in the family came together to sing and play the piano, play “42” and dominoes, tell stories both old and new, and eat beans and cornbread and turkey and dressing and ham.
There was pea salad for Gilbert, pork ‘n’ bean salad for Cecil, and homemade pies (one chocolate for Claude and another for Troy, mincemeat for Milton, and pineapple for Marvin). After Christmas dinner, the womenfolk would sit around the table and eat salted ice.
The Walnut Street house was a two storey, and the stairway was enclosed. The girls would pretend that the stairs were seats on a train and sing their three part rendition of “Sentimental Journey,” and they can still do it today.
4. Live! On Stage!Once upstairs, the trio found a two foot high window seat / storage area to be a perfect stage and would rehearse and perform there for their mothers. Some years later in that same second floor venue, Carolyn would play the role of opponent, target, ball girl, and, in general, adoring little sister when Milton practiced ping pong.
5. Magical Mashings for Milton
Speaking of Milton, Judy (above, right) and Arlene (above, left) remember at time when he would not eat beans and cornbread unless Carolyn mashed them up for him on his plate. (And from a later era: on Milton’s wedding day, he was nervously rushing to get dressed and ready when he discovered that his mother had sewn the legs of his boxer shorts together.)
6. Heavy Cold
In that same Walnut Street attic, the trio remember sleeping together in the winter when they were immobilized by six quilts and blankets and still cold.
7. Oscillating Heat
In the summer, it was so hot in Hillsboro that no one could sleep upstairs. The girls remember waiting breathless for the oscillating fan to bring its breeze across their piece of the foldout couch bed downstairs on Walnut Street.
8. Cooling Down
Coming in from playing outside in other summers, they would stand three abreast in front of the evaporative cooler in the window, looking out the window, hot, sweaty, tired, and happy.
9. Mirrored Giggles
They also stood together in front of a large round mirror on a dresser trying to practice their singing together. And giggling so hard and so often they could not sing a note. (Steve and his buddy Glen had the same trouble practicing “Baby Talk” decades later in a church restroom that must have had some of the same acoustical properties as the Walnut Street stairway.)
10. Giggles of DisasterArlene and Ila Mae (their usual accompanist) were not present one evening for worship at Line Street Methodist when Carolyn and Judy performed a duet for a service being broadcast on radio KHBR. The substitute accompanist began missing notes, and the duo began to giggle. And continued through the end of the song before running straight out of church in humiliation.
11. Life at the Table
In a big family, there was seldom room for everyone at the dinner table. But the memory of life around that family table was warmth and joy and beans (butter beans or red beans) and buttered cornbread (mashed together), fresh tomatoes (carefully sliced and peeled), fresh green onions, and boiled potatoes. Though Daddy was a butcher, meat was not the centerpiece.
12. Life at the Table: Round Two
It was usually the custom, because there was not room for all, for the men and boys to eat first. That left the table to the women and girls to finish up and sit together and talk. And while they talked, the girls remember, the last bite of every meal was a spoonful of ice, lightly salted.
13. Cornbread and Grace
The women and girls would sit together after meals, eat salted ice, and talk. But maybe they weren’t so clear about passing down the family recipes. When there mothers were away at lunchtime one day, the enterprising trio fixed lunch for Daddy /Granddaddy, including cornbread from scratch. Alas, they used baking soda instead of baking powder, leaving the cornbread flat and nasty. When served the disastrous traditional dish, their gracious dinner guest choked it down and said, “Mmmm. That’s good.”
13.1 Cornbread and First Impressions
Decades later, Maria Jose sat down to her meal at the Benton family home (which she reported to her family at home later was like living in a Broadway musical because at any time and for no apparent reason one or more Bentons might burst into song). She was served cornbread, of course, and fresh purple hull peas. One by one, fork after fork around the table, she and the others discovered that, receiving an unexpected phone call from a Hillsboro boy friend (not boyfriend she says) during the mixing of the cornbread, Carolyn had added – who knows for sure? – five to ten times the amount of salt needed! Maria Jose gamely and graciously tried the graceful reply (see 13. above), but there was too much sputtering and reaching for water to make it stick.
14. Matinee BargainsThere was a single movie theatre in Hillsboro, and occasionally the girls were given ten cents – nine cents to get into the theater with a penny left over for a gumball. (Another movie memory for Carolyn was, years later and at a much higher price, seeing Vincent Price’s “House of Wax.” She still sees scenes of it in an occasional nightmare for free.)
15. Big Brother Was Watching
When the girls watched black and white movies at home on the tiny, rounded screen of their early television set, they were never alone. At the saddest, most heart-wrenching moments, big brother / uncle Cecil would rush to the kitchen and return just in the nick of time – with a dishpan to catch the tears. (At other times, he would simply announce on cue, “Tear check!”)
16. Hillsboro Happy Days
When they were somewhat older, the girls remember going to the movies, and then – without fail – cruising down the street to Tacker’s (Hillsboro’s version of Arnold’s) Drive-In for treats.
17. Down Park Hill
When the older brothers / uncles were not driving them to Tacker’s for a treat, they would drive the girls to the City Park. On the way, they would make a point of traveling by way of the dreaded “Park Hill.” At breakneck, life-threatening speed, they would careen down the near-vertical hill like a roller coaster without brakes. (Or so it seemed at the time.)
18. In the FloorThere’s another travel by car memory from the days when the little girls were little and the cars were not. Carolyn remembers the three of them riding on the floor of the backseat as their parents / grandparents drove down to San Antonio. It was not misery or punishment; it was fun! (Carolyn also remembers visiting family in Elm Mott and sitting outside on the porch of the un air-conditioned house, wiggling her toes into the dirt just beneath the porch and finding it cool and comforting.)
18.1 On the Road
Carolyn and her parents often took Sunday afternoon drives. Some Sundays they would “go visitin’,” and others they would just drive around and “see the sights.” It was on such trips as these that Carolyn noticed occasional stalks of corn or maize growing much higher than the rest of the plants in the fields. These she designated, “Freaks.” And she also remembers passing some cows and saying, “Look! That cow is climbing up on the back of the other one!”
19. At the Park
While grown-ups gathered to watch softball or eat watermelon in the City Park, the girls would play with dozens of other children on the swings and seesaws and other equipment there. They remember “Fruit Basket Turnover” in the shallow children’s swimming pool (Where did the deep children swim? At the same place the fast children are at play!) and Milton (the nearest brother / uncle to them in age) being able to walk the rotating barrel without falling.
20. Wonder Bugs
On summer nights at the City Park or in the yard at home, the girls remember fondly watching the abundant lightning bugs (AKA fireflies, glow worms, and Photuris lucicrescens) and catching them in clear bottles, poking holes in the lids, and celebrating their amazing light. (Another bug’s tale of the era involves little Carolyn alone: She went to the backyard to put some trash into a barrel where it would be burned. When she lifted the lid, she found dozens of bagworms (AKA evergreen bagworm and Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis). Horrified, she dropped the heavy lid on her hand, hastily pulled it loose, and ran to the house. She can show you today the small piece of ash from the lip of the barrel that remains embedded in her hand.)
21. Home AloneIt was a simpler, safer time back then, and, when a short shopping trip was called for, it was not unusual or dangerous to leave three responsible girls at home. And if they were good, they recall, sometimes their mothers or aunt /sister Elouise would bring home Dick Tracy color books or paper dolls!
22. Sharing Wash DayWashing clothes was a different matter, too, back in the day. Not unlike Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing companions, the girls remember how much fun it was when Mother / Grandma was washing clothes on the back porch to get to stir the bluing with a stick. And there is a memorable photo of little Carolyn hanging doll clothes out to dry on an improvised clothesline.
23. Washing Those Men Right Out of Their Hair
On Saturday morning, all three girls and their grandma / mother would wash their hair and roll it up in pin curls fastened with bobby pins. They remember the pride and joy – and the womanly bond - of being in the house together as their hair dried. Four of them, together, doing what women do.
24. Men!
The men of the family (who were at work on those pin curl Saturdays) in an infamous story of good intentions gone awry brought a literal end to the family table. When Grandma / Mother was out of the house, Marvin, Troy, and Claude replaced her dining table with a brand new chrome and formica beauty. They took the wobbly, old, round solid walnut antique she had raised her children around to the city dump. She was madder than anyone can remember. As any woman would be!
25. Oh My!
There was a moment in family history which lives in infamy to this day, however, when Grandma / Mother did a notably unwomanly deed. It was one moment only, not repeated before or since, and thus, its place in family lore is unprecedented. As the story goes, she had cooked a pie and was removing it from the oven when something went wrong and it slipped from her hands and fell top down onto the kitchen floor. But that was not yet the moment to remember. As the ruined pie hit the ground, Mother / Grandma said, “Shit!” Out loud. For the first, last, and only time the three witnesses recall.
26. “Marvin!”
When any of the three girls tells a story about Grandma / Mother shushing or scolding her husband, she will include the one key word – “Marvin!” – pronounced in exactly the same way. With so many sleepovers, even with their girlish giggling, oscillating fan noises, and whispering, there are lots of these stories that happened in the dark of night. A repeated and familiar quote in the night responds to Granddaddy / Daddy’s loud snoring: “Marvin! Marvin! Roll over! Marvin! Good grief!” (Long after the girls moved to their own separate beds and houses, an audiotaped recording of family Christmas prepared one year for uncle / brother Gilbert stationed overseas closed with sounds of his daddy (Marvin) snoring.)
27. “Marvin! Marvin!”
The top of the line “Marvin!” in the night memory gallery is the Night of the Butter Beans. On this night, the three girls in one bed, stifled giggle after giggle after giggle as snores and gaseous blasts echoed through the night, each one followed by, “Marvin” or “Marvin! Good grief!” After some time Grandma / Mother made it four in the bed as she came to join the gigglers muttering, “That is the Last Time I am ever going to fix butter beans…” It was not. Another dropped pie story (see 23. above) evoked the same promise concerning the baking of pies for visiting sons and sons-in-law, but it was likewise dismissed at a later time. On the Night of the Butter Beans, however, there was no more giggling after she arrived.
28. Weinie Man
When Marvin was plying the meat cutter’s trade at B & J Grocery on Franklin St., the girls would often go grocery shopping with their mothers. While the women walked the aisles with their grocery carts, the girls would visit the meat counter. In exchange for a three part harmony rendition of “I Know a Weinie Man,” their favorite meat cutter would give each girl – what else? – a weinie. Sometimes, they remember receiving huge dill pickles from a jar at the meat counter, but what song those pickles rewarded remains lost to history.
29. Side-by-Side (-by Side)
Another treat during occasional shopping trips was a stop at Groves Ice Cream Store. There the trio would each order a Side-by-Side – two scoops served as the treat was named at the top of a single wide-topped cone. Then as now, the other two report, Carolyn always ordered vanilla and faithfully defended her perennial choice as she does to this day with – “It’s the best!” (At H & R Corner Drug Store, it was vanilla and chocolate sodas they were served. In tall glasses on spinning stools with red vinyl seats.)
30. Mountain Springs
Just east of Hillsboro was a spring-fed public pool named Mountain Springs (though the nearest real mountains were hundreds of miles away). Outside the kiddie pool at the bottom of Park Hill in the City Park, the girls were never the biggest fans of swimming, but Mountain Spring was still a fondly remembered hangout.
31. The BestCarolyn was acknowledged by the other two as – like her vanilla – the best when it came to playing Jacks. Even now that her childhood age advantage has switched places (so to speak) and become an age disadvantage, no wise bettor would bet against her versus her childhood competitors or younger generations of family Jacks wannabes. (Carolyn also remembers pitching softball at recess in the fifth grade and being pretty good at it, and her piano teacher told her daddy that Carolyn didn’t need a teacher because she practiced so much and played so well. So he stopped the lessons.)
32. In Harmony
Around the piano at home (or in church or on their upstairs stage) there was no single best. Whether it was Ila Mae or Cecil or Milton at the piano, everybody sang, and everbody made the very best music and the very best memories. (By the way, Cecil, as it turns out, had a little more success on radio KHBR than Carolyn and Judy (See 10. above.). He played the piano and sang requests while hosting his own program that the girls remember listening to. Dreamily.)
33. Going On Record
Occasionally in the dim past, someone would bring home a recording device that would cut vinyl discs of family musical performances. The girls remember making such recordings and hearing at least one again as adults. When is someone going to relocate that treasure and record it in a more permanent form? Is it too late already? You can hear their close harmony live when they are together, but the little girls’ voices were still available not so very long ago.
34. The Band Played OnAt Hillsboro High, each girl in turn became a saxophonist in the high school band beginning precociously in the eighth grade. By Carolyn’s senior year, she was drum major, and the others joined her in both the marching band and the stage band. And Daddy / Granddaddy drove the football team bus to ballgames! (A year or so later in Fort Worth, you would hear Arlene performing “Embraceable You” with the Paschal High School Stage Band.)
35. Summer on the Desk TopA successful band doesn’t succeed on talent alone – even if it has access to the talented girls whose memories are recalled here. It takes hours and hours of practice before school, after school, and in the hot summer, too. One of the girls’ summer memories is making the band director’s wife furious by sitting on his desk. (Another memory of making people mad at HHS came the time Gilbert and friends stopped up the basement drains and turned on all the faucets…)
36. The Hustler
Back in the day, Hillsboro was county seat of a “dry” county where it was against the law to sell alcoholic beverages or serve them in public places. Along with alcohol, card playing was believed by many in Texas to be a little shady. Thus, the Hillsboro girls grew up drinking sody waters and playing dominoes. The men of the family always played “42” a higly simplified dominoes version of Bridge that required 4 players. The girls remember that Mother / Grandmother would occasionally fill the fourth spot at a “42” table when needed. After much coaxing and requisite demurring, saying, “I don’t even know how to play,” she’s sit down at the table, grab up four dominoes in one hand and three in the other like a pro and, as they remember it, win every time.
37. Around the SquareAs the county seat, Hillsboro was the proud location of a limestone courthouse built in 1890 and surrounded by The Square.* As the girls remember it, all the streets around the square and approaching it were hung with overhead stars and garlands to prepare for the annual celebration of Christmas. For them it meant that soon all of the seven children and the grandchildren would gather at the family home for the most wonderful day of the year.
38. Family Christmas
What made Christmas the very best day of every year was never presents, it was family. This way the day when everyone – everyone! – in the family came together to sing and play the piano, play “42” and dominoes, tell stories both old and new, and eat beans and cornbread and turkey and dressing and ham.
There was pea salad for Gilbert, pork ‘n’ bean salad for Cecil, and homemade pies (one chocolate for Claude and another for Troy, mincemeat for Milton, and pineapple for Marvin). After Christmas dinner, the womenfolk would sit around the table and eat salted ice.39. No Clumps Allowed
When Christmas trees were decorated, electric lights (when they had them) came first, followed by colorful Christmas balls and other decorations one by one, branch by branch, and then, as the final touch, came “icicles.” Tiny silver wisps of shiny tinsel an eighth of an inch wide and maybe fourteen or sixteen inches long, icicles were sold in packages tightly wound together around a rectangular cardboard frame. In some families, icicles might be tossed at a Christmas tree four, five, or ten at a time. But the girls remember that on their tree there was no clumping! Each icicle was placed one at a time for the perfectly balanced tree.
40. One Christmas Eve
It was just past supper time one Christmas Eve when Daddy / Granddaddy came home from the meat market bringing with him the last Christmas tree on the lot. Instead of setting one aside for himself, he let others have their choice and brought home a tree that had been passed over, undernourished, asymmetrical, thin, and gangly. He also brought home an elderly black man the girls knew only as Preacher. Ida set an extra place at the table with Marvin for Preacher, and they sat down together at the table. After the meal, Preacher went on his way, the the family got down to decorating their Christmas tree, ending with tinsel icicles hung one at a time.
*Neither the girls who would not be born for twenty years or more afterwards nor their older relatives even knew that in the 1920s, a vengeful mob dragged Bragg Williams, a black man convicted of raping a white woman near a smaller Hill County hamlet, from the county jail across the street to the courthouse where they tied him to a hitching post and burned him to death.
When Christmas trees were decorated, electric lights (when they had them) came first, followed by colorful Christmas balls and other decorations one by one, branch by branch, and then, as the final touch, came “icicles.” Tiny silver wisps of shiny tinsel an eighth of an inch wide and maybe fourteen or sixteen inches long, icicles were sold in packages tightly wound together around a rectangular cardboard frame. In some families, icicles might be tossed at a Christmas tree four, five, or ten at a time. But the girls remember that on their tree there was no clumping! Each icicle was placed one at a time for the perfectly balanced tree.
40. One Christmas Eve
It was just past supper time one Christmas Eve when Daddy / Granddaddy came home from the meat market bringing with him the last Christmas tree on the lot. Instead of setting one aside for himself, he let others have their choice and brought home a tree that had been passed over, undernourished, asymmetrical, thin, and gangly. He also brought home an elderly black man the girls knew only as Preacher. Ida set an extra place at the table with Marvin for Preacher, and they sat down together at the table. After the meal, Preacher went on his way, the the family got down to decorating their Christmas tree, ending with tinsel icicles hung one at a time.
*Neither the girls who would not be born for twenty years or more afterwards nor their older relatives even knew that in the 1920s, a vengeful mob dragged Bragg Williams, a black man convicted of raping a white woman near a smaller Hill County hamlet, from the county jail across the street to the courthouse where they tied him to a hitching post and burned him to death.
2 comments:
I have never seen the "New High School." The other one pictured is the high school I went to. At one time it also housed Hill Jr. College.
Hey Carolyn - want to play jacks? I was the champ in my 6th grade classes... What did you play? 1, 2, 3? or 1,1,1,1,1,1 2,2,2,2,2,2 3,3,3,3,3,3? Those 1,1,1's could have been 12 or more 1's...
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