BRENHAM, TEXAS
1950-52
We made it back to Texas from Elmira, N.Y. just after I’d turned two years old. Joanie was 4 ½ and Anne was almost a year and a half old. Joe was a newborn. Dad was still in sales with Corning Glassware. He traveled constantly, thus leaving Mom with four children under the age of 5 to care for while he traveled. My memories of Brenham are very vivid for 2 1/2 - 4 year old.
The picture featured in this story is an actual photo of the house were we lived in Brenham, Texas. The car you see parked near by is the family car, a 1949 light green Chevrolet Sedan two-door. It was my first memory of a family car, and probably the first one my dad ever owned. On the other hand, it might have been a company car.
I remember Dad lining us all up before getting in it and giving us a big lecture about how “If you kids distract the driver, we could have a wreck, and the metal in this automobile would become razor sharp and could CUT YOU TO RIBBONS!" I remember those exact words as though it was yesterday. Then he opened the car door, pulled the driver’s seat forward and told us to get in. I was terrified to get in, so Dad helped me get in, but I curled up in a little ball behind the driver's seat on the floor. I was afraid of the car, that it would "cut me to ribbons!" If I made myself as small as possible, maybe I wouldn’t get cut to ribbons.
Since Mom had the four of us to take care, she hired two maids to take turns helping out with the house and kids. Dozzie, (for Dorothy), and Marie were two very large God-fearing black women. Polio was going around then, and I remember whoever was there on any particular day would pour scalding water on the dishes after washing them, to make sure they were free of any polio virus.
There are so many little clips of memories associated with Brenham and the people there. Dozzie and Marie both knew that we were afraid of the daddy long-leg spiders that we would occasionally see in the bathtub, so if the weather permitted, we’d get bathed in a galvanized aluminum tub in the front yard. I remember one day one of them, Dozzie or Marie had brought a cow to graze in our front yard. She grazed right next to our front yard tub bath. I wanted to ride her.
Then there was Sergeant. He would come whistling down the graded road on his horse with a pony in tow. For a nickel, he’d let a little kid ride the pony. One day, Dad caved in and let me “wide da’ hossie” I can still remember my first smell of “horse”; a very curious smell, indeed. Sergeant was a very proud veteran of WWI. You can tell that just by looking at the picture.
Many times, Mom would tell us not to stray from the yard, and certainly not across the railroad tracks. I don’t’ think I knew what railroad tracks were. We did try to obey and stayed close to the house. One day in particular though, I found myself wandering on the other side of the railroad tracks, unbeknownst to me. There was a kindly old black woman, who took me up on her front porch. She’d gotten a branch from her tree and had painted it white. While I was there, she let me help put gumdrops on the ends of each little branch. I probably ate more than I helped put on the branch. She gave me the little gumdrop tree, and I was so proud of it. After we’d done that, the woman calmly took me by the hand and lead me back across the tracks and home. Mom had been almost hysterical with worry. I believe that was my first ever spanking.
There was the matter of the first blue norther that I’d ever heard of. Of course I had no idea as to what that was, except that it was supposed to get cold. We were off somewhere in the car with Mom and Dad for quite some time. I remember that when we returned, we couldn’t get in the house, and Mom had to climb in the window on the porch. It might have been that everything was frozen shut, or maybe a missing key. She managed to get the door open and we all went in. There was some big to-do over a pile of wet diapers frozen to the hard wood floor. I’m just guessing that Mom had washed them and had wrung them out and put them in a pile to hang up to dry and just didn’t quite have time to hang them up to dry before we’d left for the day.
Joanie had a best friend named Vera Jean, whom she called “Very Jean”. She lived next door, and was quite a bit older (maybe 14), and Mom would let her help out with us kids. I even found a picture of her. Absolutely amazing what comes to mind just writing about childhood memories.
There is a memory of red ants that I stepped in. Dozzie came running out and brushed them off of me. I thought I was getting spanked. Those big red ants are all but extinct now, from all of the insecticides used to eradicate insects from crops. It’s a shame, because without the big red ants, the famed Texas Horned Toad is also just about extinct as well.
That’s most of what I remember of Brenham, Texas
