They're interesting cypher shingles.
I've never seen any before.
But there was a place between where the house is,
and do you, is that on?
It's on now.
Okay, we can go back to that, okay?
We can talk about something else. Sorry.
And I think you were talking about,
you went to Kincaid then,
and then you moved to Crowville as a freshman.
And I went to Tybee High School as a freshman.
And every day we went to lunch at the Cozy Grill
and they ate cheese enchiladas, and pecan pie,
and I flunked Spanish, which was right after lunch.
So they said.
Where was the Cozy Grill?
Where was that?
It was kind of where,
right near the movie, the Arcadia,
that's downtown, to the right of that,
right in there someplace.
Did somebody have a car to get y'all down there?
I guess they did, because we didn't walk.
Yeah, I didn't have that much time.
I didn't. Yeah.
I had to ride the school bus to town.
So you were living?
We were living outside of Ingraham then.
It may have been a school in Ingraham,
but I don't think so.
I don't think so either.
I don't think then that they had a,
I think Ingraham came to Crowville then. Yeah.
So you came in on the bus to go to school?
Or if we were late, I came with my father.
He, with my dad, would bring me.
Oh, okay.
Or, and mostly I rode the bus.
Yeah, okay.
And what can you remember about Tyvee?
I had a grand time, obviously, and made friends.
Lots of people that are not here anymore, but.
Who were some of your friends back then?
Well, I have to try to think of their names again.
I went out, oh, I used to have dates
with a young man named Otto Baron.
And Gippo, I'd have forgotten what his last
name was,
but he was later in the post office in Crowville.
Oh, okay.
Chambliss was his last name.
Oh, yeah, Preston, no, not, it was his brother.
Preston Chambliss' brother,
and I can't think of his name yet, uh-huh, okay.
And Trillby was then later Speakman's.
She was most Trillby, Mosty.
Mosty, uh-huh.
And lots of the Mosties.
Right now, I can't think of.
I think, yeah.
And were you involved in anything at Tyvee?
I was an antlerat.
Oh, good.
We were, too.
We used to go, the Blue Light Hotel was there,
and there was the drugstore was on the corner.
And we would dance to a jukebox in the
afternoon sometimes.
And they still had the parade that would come down
and gather around that corner where the bank
and Shriners' Store and the Blue Light Hotel was.
And do cheerleaders and things like that.
I don't think I was a very good participant,
but we marched, and I don't remember a whole
lot about that.
I just remember mostly fun things.
Well, no, Miss Mulberry was my English teacher,
and I don't remember what the Spanish teacher's
name was.
But, anyway, I flunked Spanish, so I had to go
to school
and say to Julio after that.
They sent me to St. Mary's Hall and San Antonio,
which was a boarding school for girls in those days.
And that's where you graduated? Yes.
Okay, and what year did you graduate?
I don't remember.
I could figure that out.
Well, that's okay.
But I didn't do that.
And what did you do then after?
No, I went to school in New York, to a school called
Bennett Junior College, which was in Millbrook,
New York. Bennett?
Bennett, B-E-N-N-E-T-T.
It was in a great, huge, big old brown shingles,
very elaborate house that I'm sure they added
things on to.
And it was fun, I had a great time.
What was your major there?
I majored in probably art-type things.
I don't know what exactly they would call it,
but I did a lot of, I've always been artistic,
like my mother, and do a lot of those kind of things.
But you took English and Spanish and French
and blah, blah, blah, those kind of things.
How many years were you at Bennett then?
It was a junior college and I graduated from there.
Went to the University of Texas for a very
short stay
and Bill Stacey and I decided to get married.
And my mother and dad said, well you have to
come home
to get ready in those days, that's what you did.
And so we did that, and I was married in 1949
in Houston.
And I'll let you start asking me more questions.
What are you gonna tell us?
I don't know what you wanna know.
You can tell us a little bit about Bill Stacey then.
Well, he was always wanting to be elected a politician.
I mean, he was always interested in politics.
Okay, he was in his club then.
I know.
The only thing he ever got elected to that he
ran for
was he was a county judge here.
And I don't remember the years,
but it was after that a long time.
We were married for 20 years and then divorced.
And I believe I do remember that he was county
judge here. Yes.
And where was Bill from?
I think he was, well he was born in Austin.
Oh, okay.
So stayed right there when he went
to the University of Texas.
No, he went to Tybee High School too.
Oh, he did?
They lived here, they lived at Camp Mystic.
And he and his sister, she was older.
And then, so I don't think she ever went to school,
but he went to, he was a cheerleader in Tybee,
but not, was he there when I was there, probably,
but I don't remember having dates with him
until later.
So they had male cheerleaders back then? Yes.
Oh, that's cool.
And what is your family religion?
I am a Christian and I went to the Episcopal Church
as a child and later, when my children were all born,
we all went to the Episcopal Church.
And I now go to the Methodist Church
because Phillip and Jean Stacy are my children.
Phillip is my child that lives here
and they and their children went to the
Methodist Church.
So I'm now practicing Methodist.
Methodist, good, yes.
I go to that church too.
And did your family have a car? Yes.
Do you remember what kind?
I don't remember.
Phillip had an old Buick that had big front fenders
and I remember when he was parked at the office
at Rio Vista,
the birds built a nest on the top of the tire.
And so the first time he swept it off
and then the next time he probably swept it off
and the third time he thought, nevermind,
and he used to walk back and forth between the office
and the house till the baby birds came.
And I'm sure he moved it someplace, I guess.
Well, not till after the birds were born, really.
It didn't take about, I don't know,
four or five weeks probably, that type thing.
Yeah, and where did you and Bill live then?
We lived, first of all, out at,
well, we lived in Houston first.
Oh, okay.
And then.
What did he do there?
He was in the insurance business
and we owned a business that made
a liquid silver polish cleaner called Dip and Rinse.
He developed that?
No, my dad bought it from somebody, Bill Rainey.
Uh-huh, oh, interesting.
And then we came here after,
I better tell you about my children first.
I had Bill Stacey the third
and George Broom Stacey and Carlita Cynthia Stacey
and Phillip Stacey and Bill was born in 1950.
George in 52, Cindy 56 and Phillip in 59
and Phillip and Jean live here now.
So just one group lives here, right? Yes.
Yeah, uh-huh, okay.
And do they live down on?
They don't.
Well, now Bill lives in, I'm gonna sneeze. Sure.
Bill lives in Bryan.
We never thought we'd have any Aggies.
We were all Texas fans.
But he and his wife are big Aggies and they
love it.
He worked for the telephone company
and ran Windstream, I mean and ran the cell
phone company
whose name escapes me right now.
And George lives in Dallas, Cindy lives in Wisconsin.
She and her husband have been missionaries in Romania.
My goodness, wonderful.
And Phillip lives, was a peer, was a school teacher
and then he was a banker and now he's the head
of Habitat.
Oh, he is, okay, wonderful.
Thank you very much.
Uh-huh, yeah.
All right, and you've got grandchildren
that live here then too, right?
Well, yes, they do.
Phillip and Jean have Gretchen too and Thomas.
And they are, Thomas is at the University of Texas
in San Antonio and Gretchen will graduate next year
from UT in Austin.
And I have lots of other grandchildren.
Sure, they were real close then, yeah.
So tell us a little bit about developing Rio Vista.
Well, my dad had been in the business,
you know, in business in Houston, in the oil business.
And that was in the days when it was blooming
in that part of the world.
And then he had a lumber company and built houses
out by where Hobby Airport is now.
And then what did you ask me, tell me.
Just about developing a Rio Vista.
Oh, Rio Vista.
Well, the buildings, he built all of the rock buildings
that are there now, except the dining hall.
And it was there that had been built by the Crates
who owned the camp before.
And I can, do you want me to tell you things
about Rio Vista, I mean, well, there were,
well, the camp was, as age-wise was,
there were pioneers, frontiers, and cavaliers.
I think there was a fourth, anyway, by age,
there were four divisions by age of the campers.
And that's how the camp is laid out,
around a circle with the youngest people in the fort,
and then the planesmen, and then the pioneers,
the planesmen, the frontiers, and the cavaliers
going around, and the river's over on the
right-hand side
as you go into the camp.
So the boys were in the cabins according to
their age?
Yes. That's what you're saying.
Okay, all right.
And did your dad develop everything that they did,
or he just kind of inherited from the Crates
so you had everything pretty much set up?
No, the camp had been closed down for a long time,
so they didn't really know anything about it.
But there was a man who had been the director
named D. Calvin, I just remember that,
that came from a long way a time ago.
And he was the first director,
and that's how Rio Vista had been set up before.
And so they followed the same plan.
And, you know, they had all the sports that you have.
Horseback riding, swimming.
Yeah, and swimming and tennis.
And he built tennis courts and built all the
rock cabins.
And there was, by then there was electricity.
And the cabins that were, the wooden cabins
that we,
as a little girl, had as my cabin,
they were all demolished and gone.
And I think the first year that they opened the
camp again
was around 1940.
Because they had bought the camp in 36. Mm-Hmm.
And can you turn it off and give me a drink of water?
By any chance?
Let's see where, I don't know where we get water.