My Aunt Sister was born Juanita Blanche Head on March 31st, 1921, in a woodframe dogtrot house in the Winona/Sandflat/Red Springs area of Smith County, Texas, near Tyler and Lindale. I have a photo of that dogtrot house --taken in 1909 when the house was new--with my grandfather Billy (John William Head), my grandmother Sallie Lee Allen Head, and my uncle Perry Head--just two years old-- standing in front of it.
My father, Ralston Cecil Head, was one of Sister's older brothers and the brother closest to her in age, and they were close all their lives. Ralston had been born in 1917 in Waco, Texas, in a house on St. Charles Street. Almost all the Head childen had been born at Winona. Of course, all children were born at home in those days, with the doctor--if any--coming to the house for the birth of the child.
Aunt Sister had many wonderful memories of life in Texas when she was a child in the 1930's and 1940's in Waco. She remembered her mother (Sallie Lee Allen Head) doing all her cooking on a big black cast iron woodburning cookstove. Delicious and wholesome food was one of Sister's best memories...that, and Family and lots of people, friends and neighbors, in and out of the old house the Heads lived in at 2224 North 4th Street. Even after the Head family moved permanently to Waco in the 1920's, breakfast was always bacon, ham, or sausage, eggs, and biscuits--never toast-- and homemade jelly, with fresh milk, butter, and cream straight from the family cow. The coffee pot was always perking on the stove, as the Heads drank coffee, not Tea.
Dinner and supper might be chicken-fried steak, fried chicken, or pork chops, biscuits or cornbread, with plenty of fresh vegetables from the huge garden behind the house. What was not consumed right away was canned or preserved for the winter months when there was no garden. Everybody took their turn working in the garden, hoeing and pulling weeds, or just watering the tender plants. Sister's mother, known as Mama Head, was a wonderful cook and did all the cooking, plus all the chores --the gardening, milking the cow, washing clothes, making lye soap, canning--basically whatever needed doing. Mama Head made beautiful patchwork quilts from scrap fabric that adorned the iron bedstead and sewed clothes, too..
All of the Head children first attended Brook Avenue Elementary Public School, until the sixth grade. Mama Head was a member of the PTA and would come to school to visit each of her seven children, coming early so she would be able to spend about ten minutes with each one. Sister remembered having to heat water over a fire to bathe for school, as their old house did not have running water, and certainly not hot water. In the summer, a kid seldom took a bath--- you just went to the nearby Brazos River to swim and get clean at the same time, or just down the hill to Cold Springs to cool off and get clean.
In Waco in those days there were only West Junior High School and South Junior High School--North Junior High did not exist at that time. All the Head kids went to West Junior, then on to Waco High School, the only high school in town. Sister's youngest brother, Durward Allen Head, also known as "Son Head", was a superb athlete at Waco High School. When I attended school there in the 1960's, the principal, Mr. Carpenter, asked me if I was kin to Son Head. I told him yes, Son Head is my uncle, my daddy's brother. Mr. Carpenter said Son Head was one of the best athletes to ever attend Waco High School. None of the schools had airconditioning or any of the luxuries we have today that we so often take for granted. All the kids from the same neighborhood would meet and walk to school together and then walk home again in the aternoon. School was a rather fun place to be---at home there were chores--- and all the Heads liked learning how to read, write, and cipher.
Aunt Sister said that when she was about ten years old, in the summertime she would go to Winona, a small town near Tyler, Texas, with her Aunt Laura and Uncle John Talbert, who lived there. They would bring a load of sweet potatoes in their truck to be sold in Waco. They would sometimes stay a week with Billy and Sally Head, then go back to Tyler. Sister would go with them with them to Winona for the week until her parents would come to visit Uncle John and Aunt Laura, or another trip to Waco was planned. Many family members still lived near Tyler, and they would visit back and forth. Almost every weekend, some of the Head family went to Winona.
Aunt Sister said some of the Head kinfolks were the first to have a car. William Lee Brady was a cousin to me. I did not know William Lee very well as he was older than me and ran around with my older cousin Sally Frances Head, whose parents were my Aunt Dixie Denton Head and Uncle Red (David Rankin) Head. William Lee later had one of the first air-conditioned cars, and all the cousins loved to ride around with him, even if it was just in the pasture! Williiam Lee's family raised roses and watermelons. You always came back from a visit to Winona with plenty of both in your trunk! Sister remembered when William Lee was born and saw him and my older cousins grow up.
Aunt Sister died at the age of 85 on September 5th, 2006, having lived a long and full life, full of memories of a time long ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment