This is November 29th, 1976, an interview with Alton Rector in the Dr. Clark Library
in Lockhart.
Now, where were you born?
About four and a half miles out of town.
the same house you're still living in? How many kids in your family? One. I had a
step-sister.
I didn't have any brothers and sisters. Where'd your parents come from? Alabama and Virginia.
My mother came from Alabama and my father from Virginia. 1881 and 1885.
Come to Luling on the southern city. Come around with New Orleans.
One of them was 12 years old and my dad was 24.
They met in here in Texas? Yeah between here and Luling. Joliet.
You don't know what that is, one of those things.
So they came by train. Why'd they come to Texas?
Well, of course, they'd come with their parents.
Their parents came, I imagine, because everybody else was going to Texas.
They thought they could get land cheaper.
The winters weren't so long. Of course, Alabama didn't have long winters, but it was, land was cheaper, you know, it wasn't settled.
Hmm.
That's the main thing, I think.
Did they ever tell you much about Alabama?
Yeah, the land wasn't much count.
Hmm.
Not much town, and we didn't make very good cotton, but it was good garden land.
We could raise stuff to eat a whole lot easier than here.
Cotton and corn didn't do well.
That's the way I remember it.
They didn't have northerners like the blizzards, like that man. It would just turn cold without any wind.
Over here, we got to have a wind from the north before it turns cold.
Well, did they tell you much about when they were kids growing up?
Yeah, they walked about four and a half miles to school.
My dad walked in the snow at school. Had snow from November to March. I was in Virginia.
And he went to school till he was 21 years old.
He did?
And the school's arithmetic and reading, I don't think they had any history.
They had readers and spellers and just the two of them.
I was out in the country in 1870 or something.
Right after the Civil War.
Was he in the Civil War?
Oh no, he was born in the Civil War.
It had just started when he was born.
I had a picture of him and his dad, him and my grandpa, him and his dad, but I lost it.
It was taken during the Civil War. You could see the soldiers around him.
He was sitting in his dad's lap. He was about a year old.
That picture was over a hundred years old. I showed it to him.
My grandpa wasn't 26 years old. About 1862.
Well, did your grandfather fight in the Civil War?
Uh-uh. He was on the railroad. He had some brothers that fought in it. Well, my
grandfather from Alabama fought in it.
Oh, he did?
Yeah, he was shot at Gettysburg and he was taken prisoner twice.
Taking President Gettysburg, he shot in the foot and couldn't walk. The southern soldiers
retreated and the Yankees took him over. As soon as he was able to walk on crutches,
they sent him home on a boat from Maryland. Someone around Virginia put him off in the
Virginia saw him on crutches.
He was taken prisoner, but then,
you know they swapped prisoners then.
They did?
Yeah, they did.
That's the only reason the war lasted so long.
They quit it so long before it's the last.
They soon saw they couldn't end the war that way.
Well, did you ever meet him?
Yeah, from my mother's father.
Yes.
Yes, I knew him.
He'd been, I was 30 years old when he died.
He hadn't been dead so awful long.
About, well, it'll be 40 years next year.
He died in 37.
He lived to be 92.
Well, did he tell you stories about the Civil War?
Yes, he said they all had shoes.
they'd take a cowhide
and cut
four corners
and you'd put your foot down in it
and
they'd bring
two corners together over your foot
and sew up the rest of it with
the all hide string
out of your shoes
and the main grub they eat was hominy
Very little meat. Very seldom ever got any vegetables.
But how many, how many did he eat? How many did he do?
He didn't want to see it anymore.
Take a wash pot and boil it.
He ate how many all the time? How many, how many, how many?
They had more corn than they had anything else.
That's about all there was to it, except for a lot of fighting, so you dig a trench and
put the dead in it, and nothing on them but dirt, 100 men in one trench, covered up with
What did he do for a living?
He came back and went on farming. He inherited 200 acres of land in Alabama.
He sold it and came to Texas in 1885 and bought 200 acres down here on Queen Anne, Luton.
He was a farmer.
Yeah, everybody farmed in them days.
Yeah.
Wasn't hardly nothing else to do.
Actually, there was a doctor or a lawyer, a banker or something,
or a store.
A whole lot of them were farmers.
Well, so your dad was raised over here?
Raised in Virginia.
He come from Texas and he was 24 years old.
How did he meet your mother?
Church, I guess. Parties around. They lived in the same community down there.
I guess that's where we met. There wasn't no other place to meet.
Well, did you go to school in Joliet?
Uh-uh.
No.
What school?
Let's see.
Glendale, I think.
First school was about a half a mile from my house, and the next one was about three
miles.
I went to school from 1915 until 26, and quit.
How come?
I got tired of going. I got tired of going a long time before I quit.
What was the school like?
It was a nice building. It was made out of finished lumber.
The only thing wrong with it, it was too big in the wintertime and the fire was too far
over it.
Outside of that there wasn't nothing wrong with the building.
You remember your teacher?
Oh, yeah.
When it was cold, in the wintertime it was just as cold here, except it wasn't in the
rain or it wasn't out in the wind, but it was just as cold there as it was outside.
You had to get right in two or three feet of the stove to get warm. They couldn't all get up there.
Hm.
Who's that?
Pat?
Uh, tell him I'll call him back.
well what's the very first thing
that you remember as a child
I couldn't party too
I remember going to school then.
Well, I remember going to school, I remember before I went.
I remember getting scolded with a fireplace at about three years old.
a big tea kettle sitting on a log and the log burned in two and the water was boiling and the
kettle tilted over. That was at my uncle's house. That boiling water come out and run under us,
scalded us. Yeah, my dad come home. He wasn't at home. He come home that evening, come out there
and got me. I remember him going through the fence with me, wrapped up, big tablecloth,
I couldn't walk. I remember that. I was about three years old.
You were an only child?
and I had after my father died while my mother married again and the man she married had a daughter
stepsister sister and brother I have had. What year were you born? 1908.
Out in Brownsboro? This side of Brownsboro alone it's six miles just away from Brownsboro
It's just four and a half miles out of town.
Well, you were born in that house?
Well, no, not exactly that house.
No, it's been built over.
Rebuilt. I remember when it was rebuilt in 1913.
All the men that worked on it are dead, I think, except two.
One of them was a painter and the other one was a carpenter. All the rest of them are dead. Two of them still live.
You know Mr. Huttenberg, Hans Huttenberg?
Yeah.
He was one of the painters and one of the carpenters was Mr. Berb Johnson. You know him?
Hmm.
You know Klein Johnson?
Hmm.
Well, there must have gone to move to Tennessee, but he was raised here, lived here a long time.
Who was your teacher at that school?
Oh, I had a different one, you know, made of...
Well, they're all dead.
There's Jack's Tub.
Well, one of them's living here in the restaurant.
Miss Ella Hilliard.
There's Henry Frank. She's dead.
Was that the sheriff's?
Yeah, the sheriff's litter.
And there's two or three others. I don't know whether they're leaving or not.
They didn't leave here.
Well, did you know Sheriff Franks?
I saw him one time.
I was a little fella.
I spent a long time with him.
Well, do you remember the first time you came into Lockhart?
No, I couldn't take it.
What was Lockhart like back in those days?
That gravel streets
It wasn't long though they had them tarveted. They hadn't tarveted by the time World War One got here.
Before
That courthouse look just like it does now
Square hasn't changed much. Only this thing and the place that had a plank sidewalk
This library was here, always been here. I think the sign out there said it was put here in 1900, wasn't it?
Yeah.
I noticed that. I noticed Dr. Clark died awful young, I don't know what the matter is.
I don't know, I think he had cancer.
No, he was really young.
Thirty-five, I think.
Well what kind of farming did your dad do? Cotton and corn and grain. With mules? Mules and horses.
How many acres did he farm? About 44. He never, after he got the place paid for, he didn't work all over to rent some of it out.
I think he bought it in, I think he bought it in 1912, no, 1907, bought it in 1907,
and he's paying for it in 1912.
Hmm.
Well, did you work?
Not then.
I was born the next year after he bought it.
Oh, yeah.
So when you were a kid, did you work in the cotton field?
Yeah.
Picked cotton and chopped cotton.
That's all I did.
Pulled cotton.
Oh, nothing didn't happen much out of the ordinary.
What happened during World War I?
Nothing that I could see.
I went to San Antonio one time with my folks and you could see a lot of soldiers standing
I was greeting, khaki uniform, that's all I know.
I was arched up as a man at the two military camps.
I was about done with this thing, I don't know why I ran.
How'd you get to San Antonio?
Went on the train.
Oh.
What did you do when you were a kid for fun?
Oh, pulled a little wagon around.
I got a locomotive for Christmas one time.
Rolled it up and down the floor.
As soon as it got big enough, we was always on the creek swimming, as soon as it got big enough, folks would let us go.
We were on the clear falls, couldn't swim, and I caught lots of poison oak that way.
I had my face swelled up, poison oak all over me.
How do you cure that?
I'll tell you, you can hardly cure it. It just goes so far and gets wet itself.
Hmm.
Did you do anything for it back in those days?
Yeah, it was like the more the doctor's worse it got and the doctor was worse than the poison of it.
But when it got ready to get well, it got well in a hurry.
It quit itching, quit burning and stinging before it healed up. It just quit.
Just running this course.
Oh, it's bad.
I haven't had it in over 20 years.
I haven't had it in over 30 years.
Not just the kids.
Were there rattlesnakes out there?
Not then, but they are now.
I never saw a rattlesnake out there
a lot at 40 years old.
I killed six
they're on my place since i was 40 years old
what about coyotes yeah i never heard of the cows being there until i was
50. now you hear them every once in a while a whole pack of them i heard them two or three
nights ago sound like it's 15 or 20 of them didn't sound like it's over half a mile from the house
It wasn't that far, a quarter of a mile.
I'd just take it home just like they was all dying in the fire.
Hmm. I never heard such a sound.
That's just their way of doing it, I guess.
Did you come to town very often?
Nope.
Not until I quit school.
After I quit school about nearly a week.
If I wasn't plowing. If I wasn't plowing, I'd come about twice a week, two or three times.
I never come to town.
I'm in my school, you know, I had to come.
Why'd you come? For supplies?
Yeah, to buy some clothes.
They'd have to send me to town to get groceries for me.
I was grown then.
We had to buy groceries every week.
What's your son?
around the square there. First one place and another. I can remember a long time ago my
dad traded at the Blackwoods grocery store, old man Will Blackwood. And then we got to
I was trading with old man Jim Lynch up in the corner.
And then from that we went to Piggly Wiggly.
About that time he quit, Piggly Wiggly and Handy Andy come in here.
They were traders there.
Well, did you ever leave Lockhart?
Ever leave?
Uh-uh.
Have you ever been out of Texas?
Never have.
Never?
Never have.
I've been thinking about it for 40 years and never have done it.
How come?
Well, it's just, I don't know, it just happens.
Well, do you like it here?
Yeah, it's all right. It's just as good as any other place.
Every place has got its advantages and every place has got its drawbacks.
did you know sheriff ellison
he was sheriff too long for anybody not to know him 25 years i think
hmm
what was he like he was a little fella heavy fret
One leg shorter than the other and he limped on the wall.
Some of them told it as a joke, reckonin' that he'd wore guns so long as he limped on it.
I think he was sheriff for 25 years. Not counting the time he was deputy sheriff.
Well, was there ever any excitement in town?
Not really. Not for a lot of it, you know.
That's how we shoot the straights around, having fires once in a while.
Nothing amounted, not any more than any other town.
Yeah.
You remember the Carter Hotel?
Yeah. The Carter Hotel.
There was another hotel here that burnt up, and I forgot what the name of it was.
I didn't see it burn, but I saw the smoke. I can't think of the name of it now.
It wasn't a Texas hotel, it was another hotel a long time ago.
I can't think of the name of that hotel that a woman was on.
Um, I can't remember it either.
The Texas Hotel went up a few years ago.
Somebody set it upon this.
The man that set it, I think, is still in the pen.
A young boy about 19 years old.
Sold gasoline and all of it.
Brought one man up and killed him.
I think they gave him 45 years.
Well, what have you been most of your life for a living?
Farming.
Farming?
I don't farm more of that place or any doubt.
I got on Social Security. I don't do nothing all of it now.
What did you farm?
Cotton, cane, corn.
I used to steal cows.
When'd you get, did you get a tractor?
You never had one?
I couldn't drive one if I had to.
I might have learned the gears the only time I could drive it.
I never drove one in my life.
Hm. How long did you farm?
Oh, from Bramacord School until about 48, 47, about 20 years.
with horses and mules yeah they got so old they didn't want to keep a farm with them or sold them
rented to a man who had a tractor and it's been rented out ever since, different ones
Wait, which parts do you have in there?
This?
This one?
I guess that's about all I know.
You can't remember much more?
That's about all.
That's about all that happened.
I was just reading Icky Bob Crane.
You ever read that?
huh yeah uh-huh that's good that was based on the yarn i think they told around
some fella lost his mind i think and they called it sleeping 20 years
he just got that in his head yeah well i got to go okay well come back and
maybe you'll remember something i might think of something and come back and tell me okay
Okay, but I think, I tell you, it doesn't much happen.