Tell me more about the malaria.
Well, water, of course, because that much is
mosquitoes, you know, it's bad water you drink.
And some of these wells were just shallow wells.
Well, now, what about Typhoid, was that a problem?
My husband had to touch a typhoid after we
married, too.
But he had been in the service and had had
shots, so it was a light case.
Do children ever get it? No.
None of my children ever had it. No.
Malaria or anything.
Of course, we moved on this side when there
were, you know, I had three then when we moved
over on this side, so they were all little.
Of course, I boiled the water that I mixed
their milk with and, you know, things like that.
Your day must have been awful full, doing all this.
It was full, lady.
Goodness gracious.
Made more bread, did more washing, more ironing.
What about canning?
Oh, yes.
We made, had a nice garden, raised our chickens.
When you were, even in Cedar Bayou, you had a
garden on.
Oh, yes.
I had a garden clear from my husband died.
Sure did.
We had a nice garden and raised our own chickens.
I had an incubator and hatched my biddies and
raised them.
Oh, I guess most people had to grow their own.
Oh, yes.
Everybody did.
We had a milk cow and everything, you know, had
our own milk. Butter.
Well, how big a place did you have when you
moved over here?
I mean, if you had a cow and chickens, how
many, did you have several acres? No.
We lived down the Beatis Road, and we first,
you know, that's the end, the royal houses
at the end of this, just before you turn to go
on to. James?
On James, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Well, those, where those apartments are down
there now.
Well, there's still a bunch of those little
houses along there.
You know, just before you get to the apartment.
Well, we call that the Baileys Row, and we
rented one of those for $15 a month.
We had to wait for it to be built.
They were, he was, Mr. Baileys was just
building them, and of course, they were not papered
or anything, just sealed houses, which we were
tickled to death to get in, because we'd
been, rice farm houses, they're not even
sealed, you know, they're just.
A lot of air blowing through. Yes.
It's cold, too, in some other time.
Well, anyway, that's where we lived first, but
we were off the cow, and my chickens went,
we had a big enough place we could have them.
And then, when we built the little place, the
third house on this street, we built that.
That's where we were living when my husband died.
And we had room enough for our cow and our
chickens and our garden and everything.
Do you remember how prohibition affected this area?
Was there, were there bootleggers, or?
Well, I'm sure there was some bootleggers.
There's bootleggers today with it dry, I mean,
with it wet, I can tell you.
Oh, certainly.
Certainly there is.
People break the law with it just as much as
they did then.
I can tell you now, we could walk down the
street and not be insulted, and I think that's
one reason we didn't have any crime then.
Oh, I bet you're right. Yes.
I bet you're right.
That's right.
And so you're saying that?
I, I, we lived at Bay City before we moved to
Lig City, and Lig City was wet, and I remember
how scared I was to walk down the street and go
by a saloon, you know.
And now, Pelly was a lot of-
Rough, yeah, oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Did Citi Bar have bars, or? No.
What made it such a nice community?
Well, it was dry. Yeah.
So prohibition had no real effect on this, this
area, really. Well-
On Citi Bar.
You mean in being wet? Uh-huh.
The wet part didn't, no, because we were dry.
I remember a lot of elections, we voted, you
know, and everything.
I always voted with a dry ticket. Always.
I see.
I wasn't aware that-
Oh yeah.
That they didn't like that. Mm-Hmm.
Well, let's see, I asked you about crime, and
you said you didn't remember it.
No, I don't.
How about hurricanes?
Well, I'll tell you what, back then, there was
Ku Klux Klan, too, and that's another-
Yeah, tell me about that.
That's another reason we didn't have crime much.
If anybody did wrong, they were just-
That's what I understand.
Whipped and tarred and feathered.
But that was what the Klan's- Yeah.
Activity was centered on.
That's right. Racial.
Yeah, crime. Mm-Hmm.
Have you ever seen any of the Klan, any of
their activities, or-
Well, I've seen lights, I've seen them where
they'd meet, you know, like out in the prairie lights.
I know that. Mm-Hmm.
But you know that some of the prominent men in
the community belong to that Klan, yeah.
That's what I understand.
They did.
And I know of one certain individual I knew
that got tarred and feathered.
Oh my goodness. Yeah.
He needed it.
How did he get it off?
How do you get that off, or did he just leave town?
I don't remember what he did, but I know that
that was the rumor at the time, and why he
did it.
He was soliciting for his wife.
Oh my goodness.
He did.
Just things like that were taken care of. Yeah.
By the Ku Klux Klan.
I think sometime we need something like that now.
Something there. Citizens.
It's so bad.
You afraid to get out your back door hardly now?
Well, were there any hurricanes?
What years?
Yes ma'am, there's hurricanes.
I was in Galveston Storm as a baby.
Oh, what?
The 1906-
1900 storm.
It's been very-
I was little.
Well, I was born in October 1898, and I was little.
I don't remember anything about it, but my dad
just told me plenty about it, and he helped
to bury the dead.
We lived at Arcadia at that time, just before
you get to Galveston.
He helped to bury the dead.
He said, you could step from one body to the
other one.
They had to get on the windward side and just
dig a shallow grave and just roll them over
wherever they shoveled and cover them up.
I had an uncle that was drowned that night and
a cousin born that night.
His wife gave birth to a son that night that he drowned.
Then when I was- we moved from Galveston up to
Hill County, and my mother died with TB.
They was afraid my dad was affected with it,
and so we went to higher climate.
Meantime, he had married my stepmother to get
the kids together, because we were taken
away from mama when she was sick.
Some of the Kin folks on either side took care
of the wee four and the half brother.
Where's Hill County?
You know where Whitney, Texas is, and Hillsboro?
Hillsboro, I do.
Well, that's Hill County.
So you weren't in the path of any hurricanes?
No, but we moved back to the coast country later.
I was ten years old, and we moved back to the
coast country.
My dad, some of his people were in the nursery
business, and that's what my dad was interested in.
He blacksmithed up in Hill County, had a
Blacksmith shop, I've got a picture of it.
He made wagon wheels, and he made, you know,
sharpened plows, and did all those kind of
things that the farmers needed then. Well.
But the hurricane.
We had just moved back just shortly before this
hurricane came, and there was no way
then that we got any warnings.
My dad knew by the way the clouds were and
everything that there was a tropical disturbance,
and I know my mother had just baked bread the
day before, eight loaves of bread and
two pans of rolls, that's what she always
fixed, you know, enough bread to last us twice
a week baked.
And she put that bread inside this, we had a
big box where she'd put her quilts, had
a lot of quilts then, you know, we didn't have
electric blankets or these central heating
and systems and all those kind of things.
You've had three or four quilts piled on you,
you know, and a feather bed.
We had some feather beds.
And she had the feather beds up in the loft in
this big old barn, and in this quilt box
she put her bread and put the lid on that, you
know, and so that the bread wouldn't get wet.
And, well, to make a long story short, the
house went to pieces.
We got, the first part of it came from the
south, no, the first part of it must have
come from the north, yeah, it came from the
south, and then the next came from the north.
And we were on the porch, Mama put coats on all
of us and had a little crippled sister
that had to be carried, and we held hands and
popped, and Mama got on one side and popped
the other, and we kids in between, and we had
the whole, the barn blew up to pieces,
and as it came sailing by, well, it just missed
the house, but the house went off the blocks
when we were on the porch, away from the wind,
ready to leave out.
And just as soon as the barn went to pieces,
well, Papa says, all right, let's go now.
And we did, we could hardly, well, couldn't
hardly walk, of course, Karen, Amy, my little
sister, and Mama had a big old tarp that she
carried, I don't know how she got it out there,
and she had an apron that she had made out of,
of the material that you make cotton sacks
out of.
I don't know if you ever saw a cotton sack in
your life, yeah, she had this apron, and
of course, that was pretty good to put over.
And we got out to a levee, see it was an old
rice farm in the beginning, and my dad had
gotten this land and they were going to have a
nursery there, that's what the idea was.
And we got to this levee and we laid down, flat
on the ground, and covered up with this
tarp and things, and we lay there until there
was a lull.
And there was two houses, and here they came
just dancing, and they finally went to pieces,
but none of the wreckage hit us or anything.
So then, when the lull came then, we got back
to the house and Mama put dry clothes on Amy
as quick as she could, got her in the bed, and,
cause the house had gone off the blocks
all right, and the furniture had shifted, but
that didn't make any difference, the
beds were still dry.
And there was a neighbor across the railroad
track from us, and she was pregnant and had
two little children, and pregnant, and Papa
could see that their house was damaged, so
he says, I'm going over to see about the goods,
and he went over there, and then they,
their house was damaged so bad, they decided to
come on over to our house, and I know,
I remember they had a great big old watermelon
they brought with them.
And they didn't in the morning get there until
here that storm came from the other
direction, see the eye of it just passed up,
and Mama had put coats back on kids, and bundled
Amy up, and we got back to the other direction
then and laid down.
And that time...
Went back to the levee again you mean?
No, no, no, the opposite direction, cause he
came back from the other direction.
And we stayed out there till it was over then.
Then the goods, father and mother, lived on up
the railroad track about, oh I guess a
mile, two miles maybe.
I know we walked up that railroad track to go
to, and all of us went there because by
that time, beds and everything else were
damaged you see, you know, wet.
And so we went to this other goods house, and
they had to pry the porch roof was down,
you know, damaged.
And we stayed there at their house, Mama got,
looked in the drawers and things, they were
off on vacation, the old folks were, the goods,
but this was their parents you see, house.
And so we went in there and just made ourselves
at home, of course they had food there, and
they had, you know, some dry beds and
everything, and that's where we went.
Oh my goodness, well you really did have an experience.
Oh yes, and then I was in, after that we had
the 1915 storm at Bay City, and that was a
bad one.
We didn't have, we were in a stronger house
that time, and wasn't as much damage done
or anything, we didn't have to leave it or anything.
When was the next one you were in, do you remember?
I don't know, I've been in a couple since we've
been in this house.
I've been in every one of them.
You're kind of a real veteran.
Oh, this has all just been so interesting.
Is there anything else about, that I haven't
asked about, about what cedar bile was like
and your life was like?
I can't, try and try to think of all the
different things you would experience.
What about clothes?
Did you make your own clothes?
Oh yes.
But you'd have to order the fabric, or what
else did the stores carry?
The stores carried some, you know, here on
cedar bile, and then of course when the refinery
came then and began to build up down there,
well the stores moved to downtown, you know,
the Ilfrey store was on Main Street and
downtown, in Baytown, yeah, it was a good treat then.
That's it.