Chapter 1: Number Eight of Eleven Children

Following the tradition of the time, I was born at home, the eighth in a family that would eventually include eleven children.  All except the first-born lived into adulthood.  My birth was not recorded immediately, and years later, when I had a need to present a birth certificate, I had to secure an

Affidavit of Birth.  It reads:

Coryell County Courthouse, 1907

• Full Name:  Willie Lee Hooton
• Date of Birth:  February 27, 1902
• Place of Birth:  Leon Junction, Coryell County, Texas
• Name of Father:  Littleton Berry Hooton
• Maiden Name of Mother:  Mary Genora Roberts
• Signed by my brother, Harvey Littleton Hooton

My father, Littleton Berry Hooton, was born October 22, 1862, on a farm near Montgomery, Alabama.  He nursed at his mother’s breast until he was four years of age.  I was told that he became ashamed and quit nursing on his own.  I don't know why my grandmother let Papa nurse so long.  It was a common belief, in that time of unreliable birth control methods, that a woman could not become pregnant as long as she nursed her child — maybe that was the reason.

Papa was only eight years old when his father died, so he had to grow up fast.  His father had never fully recovered from the hardships of service in the Civil War.  Internment in a Union Army prison camp had taken a permanent toll on his health, and his death came only a few years after the end of that war.  His young son soon began to feel the responsibility of taking care of his mother.  My papa learned to be a good farmer in a hurry.

He never had the opportunity to go to school, but he was proud that he could write his own name and always signed official papers L.B. Hooton (with three o’s), unlike the spelling of Hooten (with an ‘e’), which our family has come to use in years since that time.  Although he was able to do very little other writing, he enjoyed learning and was always open to new ideas.  I remember my aunt saying to a friend, “Litt would really be smart if he’d had an education” (Papa and Mama were known to family and friends as “Litt” and “Molly”).  The friend answered, "Litt is smart anyway."

Papa must have been gifted in mathematics.  I have seen him solve problems in his head faster than his sons could solve the same problems on paper — and my brothers were considered good in math.  He even designed and built his own cotton-picking machine.

Mary and Willie Roberts

Mama's name was Mary Genora Roberts.  She was born May 17, 1869 in Newton County, Georgia to Willie B. Roberts and Martha P. Jones.

Mama had an identical twin.  She and her twin sister, Winnaford Udora, were so much alike that their clothing had to be marked to tell them apart.

Winnaford Udora died just before her wedding day at the age of nineteen.  Her death was sudden and totally unexpected.  She had been in good health when she came down with typhoid fever.  Mama never got over the loss of her twin.  She often told us how close they had been, that their feelings for each other were unlike her feelings for her other siblings.

The Roberts Twins

A brunette with dark brown eyes, my mother was always beautiful to me, even to the day she died at the age of eighty-eight.  Papa was a handsome man of medium height and medium build.  His hair was black, his complexion fair, and he had bright blue eyes.  He was a gentle man who was seldom provoked to anger; but when his passion was kindled, he had everybody’s attention for a while.

Mama always wanted to have a child with blue eyes like Papa, but all of us children had brown eyes.  When I studied biology in college I learned that a person who had pure brown eyes, both genes brown, could never have a blue-eyed child because brown is a dominant gene.  I saw Mama watching and wishing that her last baby, Doyle, would have blue eyes like Papa.  But it could never happen for Mama; I think she had only brown genes.

My parents’ meeting was a classic case of love at first sight:  Mama and her twin sister were attending a Christmas party.  Papa was visiting a brother in Georgia and happened to attend the same party.  When Papa saw Mama the first time at the party, he asked his brother, Henry, to tell him about “one of the twins.”  Henry told him that the one he wanted to know about was called Molly.  Papa replied, “Molly, my wife.”  Mama said she had similar thoughts about Papa.  She was only seventeen but already engaged to marry another man.  Papa did not give up and within six weeks, on January 31, 1886, Papa and Mama were married!

Litt and Molly Hooton

By the time Mama met Papa, she had advanced to the seventh grade in school.  Her record tells me that the seventh grade basic skill requirements of her day were probably more like those of a high school graduate of today.  It was not the custom for children to enter school as early as our children do today, and many felt fortunate to be able to attend school at any age.

After their marriage Papa took Mama to Montgomery, Alabama to live next to his older brother, James.  There they started their family and grieved the death of their firstborn, Nora, before the child had reached her second birthday.  Within eight years, however, they'd had three additional children, my sisters Jessie Earl (Jessie—March 9, 1889), and Lillie Lavera (Lillie—February 22, 1891), and my brother, Harvey Littleton (Harvey—July 8, 1893).  After I was grown I read a letter that had been written to Mama by her mother.  Among other things, my grandmother said, “You had better be careful, Molly; you and Lit will have a large family before you know it.”

In 1893 Papa and Mama moved to Leon Junction, Texas where Papa continued farming.  They came by wagon train with several other families.  While crossing the Mississippi River on a ferry boat, my sister, Lillie, almost drowned in the river.  We were told that Aunt Sallie, Mama's younger sister, saved her life.  Lillie was two and one-half years old at the time and still remembered that crossing when she was ninety.

Three more little Hooten children were born in Leon Junction before my own birth in 1902.  They were Martha Pearl (Pearl—March 26, 1895), Luther Asberry (Berry—April 17, 1897), and Daisy Mae (Daisy—October 28, 1899).

I was still the youngest when my parents packed up our belongings and moved to a house a mile and a half from Oglesby, Texas.  There, in Oglesby, the last of my brothers and sisters were born: Rosa Edith (Rosa—September 11, 1905), Barney Arthur (Barney—July 13, 1907), and Doyle Franklin (Doyle—July 8, 1911).  Mama’s health during her final pregnancy was a concern to all of us.  At the age of ten, I was aware my forty-two-year-old mother worried that she would not live to see her child born.  I remember bathing her swollen feet and legs and Papa telling her that he thought maybe this child was coming to take care of her after he was gone.

That seven-room frame house at Oglesby, with a porch on one side and an outhouse in the back, is the first place I remember.

Closed in from the outside world, on cold winter evenings our family gathered in the large living room next to the red brick fireplace.  We baked potatoes in the ashes of that fireplace and popped corn over the coals in a covered pan with a long handle.  This is where Santa Claus came and left our Christmas gifts, and it was the site of Papa’s ghost stories.

The end of his stories often found us in a graveyard where evil spirits, supposedly, roamed on Halloween night.  He could make me believe that ghosts surrounded us.  One night during Papa's story, I heard a chain rattle.  It seemed to come from our large gate that opened our way to the public road.  I can still feel the chill that went over me; I knew the chain was being dragged by some of those evil creatures Papa was telling us about.  My younger sister cried.  She was afraid to go to bed.

Most of my memories of our living room are pleasant but I remember one bad stormy afternoon when we were gathered there when my father was gone.  My older sister and her husband were visiting.  All of a sudden lightning struck a tree close to the house.  My grown-up brother-in-law jumped up and ran to my Mother as if she could protect him.  I had not understood the danger before that time, but for years afterwards, electrical storms terrified me.

In that room I met the three R’s.  My parents had quite a school going at home before I came along.  Schoolteachers had boarded with my mother’s family in her childhood home.  She admired them and wanted to be like them.

And Mama truly was a teacher at heart – a good one.  Until she lived with me many years after I was married and teaching, I never knew she had wanted to teach professionally.  While helping me with some school art projects one evening she said, “I wish I could do what you do; I have always wanted to be a school teacher.”  I assured her that she had always been a schoolteacher — she just did it at home.  As I look back, now I believe her unspoken attitude of admiration for the teaching profession surely had much to do with my own desire to teach.

For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a schoolteacher.  I liked school and I liked books; and I loved children.  On the back wall of our house, my sister and I constructed a wonderful large playhouse from odds and ends of boxes and imagination.  She did the housework in our playhouse and I took care of our children.  My first children were dolls — both rag dolls and store-bought china dolls.  Later, during harvest, when my Mother had several ladies helping to cook for large groups of men, I was the one who took care of all the children.

Before I started to the public school, Mama spent a lot of time teaching me at home, getting me ready.  With chalk and the bluish-gray slate as a tablet for writing, I learned my ABC's, I learned to make numbers, and that is how I finally learned to read.  She taught me the same way she had taught my older brothers and sisters.  “Most of them,” my sister Daisy recalled, “were ready for second grade level upon entering public school.”

Two and a half years older than I, Daisy was always my standard of excellence, the person to be imitated.  If Mama cooked a new dish of food, I waited for Daisy to taste it first.  If she liked it, I liked it too.  If Daisy didn't like it, I didn't even taste it. 

The first public school I attended was located in Oglesby, the same school Daisy attended.  At almost eight years old when I started to school, my expectations were great.  I was always eager to do what my older brothers and sisters were doing.

Lunch pail with cup

I walked with my brother, sister and friends on dirt roads a mile and a half to and from school each day.  There was no pavement in the area at that time.  When a hard wind was blowing from the north, I would put my head down and walk behind a short fat fellow who was about as wide as he was long.  One day my windbreak stopped suddenly in front of me.  I ran into him and fell flat on the ground.  He turned, looked down, and said, "I was just teasing." — He had always known I was there, while I thought I had a secret windbreak.  We carried what we needed according to the grade we were in —books, pencils, and lunches.  Our lunches were carried in small round metal buckets with lids.  We each had our own bucket and I remember lunches of fried ham, sausage, boiled eggs, biscuits, cookies or, perhaps, a fried pie.

We woke up early every morning.  Papa called my brothers, Harvey and Berry, first.  They got up, built a fire in the big cook stove, then they all went out to milk the cows and tend the other animals.  Mama and Pearl prepared biscuits, meat, eggs and cereal for breakfast, Daisy set the plates and silver on the table, and I ground the coffee.  After breakfast, we got ready to go to school.

Daisy remembered our first grade teacher well.  Her name was Miss Addie Hill, she was not married and lived with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. George Isbell.  Miss Addie Hill taught us in a school building made of white rock and heated with coal.  The toilets were outside.  Both Daisy and I remember the school as comfortable and the house where we lived as a large one.  There were pretty lilacs, honeysuckles, roses and my sister still remembers her best friend, Clara Banister.  I agreed with my sister when she said, "We kids had a very good life."

I especially loved my second grade teacher, Mrs. Eva Powell.  I still have a little card that she gave me dated with the year 1910.  Both teachers were good with young students.  Willie Merle Campbell was my best play companion.  We played together after school while I waited for the older children to finish their school day.

My maternal grandmother Roberts had a weak back and a maid to help her with the housework, but she did not fail to train my mother and her other daughters in the domestic skills that were considered an even more important part of their education than the academic skills.  The quality of our lives — our food, our clothes, our bedding, and health of our family – depended on this part of our education.

Mama was an artist when it came to pattern cutting and sewing.  She made our clothes for school and other occasions during my early life.  They were made from cotton cloth, ginghams and percales.  Sometimes she also used linen made from flax and wool.  She cut and sewed Papa's suits as well as clothing for herself and her children.

She gathered milkweed blossoms and imprinted them on a framed canvas to decorate the fireplace.  I think pressing the flowers flat on the canvas made the designs, splattering laundry bluing over them, and then removing the flowers to leave their impression on the canvas.

Stacks of beautiful quilts were pieced and quilted.  I remember Papa holding a lamp so Mama could see how to quilt at night.  Mama even helped me with quilting after I was married.

The combined kitchen and dining room was a favorite gathering place for the family.  We were proud of our Majestic range stove that was equipped with a warming closet high above the firebox and oven.  I can still recall the aroma of ginger snaps, and yeast breads, peach cobblers and apple dumplings coming from that old Majestic oven.  Three hot meals were prepared daily with each member of the family sharing responsibilities.

Another wonderful part of the Majestic range was its water reservoir.  The reservoir held and warmed about fifteen gallons of water that was filled by hand from water drawn from the well and carried in buckets.  Mama tried to keep it full most of the time.  The warm water from that Majestic range reservoir was used for cooking, dish washing — and to fill the round galvanized tub in which we sat to take our baths.  We never thought of the discomfort or inconvenience of pulling our knees up to fit into the tub.  Mama arranged for the girls to have their baths on Saturday afternoon when the men were out of the house.  Modesty was imperative.  The boys took baths on Saturday night after supper.

Our well was located near the end of the long porch.  Two oak buckets were attached to a rope and a pulley was used to draw the water.  It was most important to keep the wells clean.  Typhoid fever could be acquired from well water.  In her childhood home, Mama had also learned about sanitation:  She told us about a time when Grandma Roberts caught the maid drinking directly from the coffee pot and really gave her, and the children, a lecture on matters of sanitation.

Papa and my brothers also hauled water from a more distant source to add to our well water supply.  I don't know how far they went to get it, but I remember the mules pulling huge barrels of water on the back of our wagon.

Our long porch became the center of activities during the summer season.  There were rose bushes in our yard, but we had more fun picking wild flowers.  Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush were my favorites.  That porch was the place that we turned the crank on our ice cream freezer, sat and talked late into the evening, and at night watched the light show of fireflies dancing about.

Occasionally Papa talked to us about the things he thought most important. I heard him say over and over, “I’d rather teach you to work and to love your work than anything else I can do for you.  If you have a job to do, do it when it needs to be done whether you want to or not.  Achievement is a great pleasure.”

Each of us had special daily chores.  My first evening chore was to bring in the kindling before supper to start fires the next morning.  Then at six years old I ground Arbuckles brand coffee for breakfast.  I felt very important.  It seemed to me that grinding coffee was just as important as making the biscuits, frying bacon, ham, or chicken or scrambling the eggs.  We always had a big breakfast in my childhood home.  I was in my teens before I tasted a dry cereal.  The name of that cereal was Post Toasties Corn Flakes.

Mama was a smart teacher.  Without ever reading a book on the subject, she understood psychology.  After my three older sisters, Jessie, Lillie and Pearl, had married and left the nest, Mama trained Daisy and me to take over their kitchen responsibilities.  She always praised us when we had done our jobs well.  Of course, that caused us to try to do even better the next time.  I recall several times when Mama brought guests into the kitchen to admire our cleaning job.

But there was one chore I never wanted; I never wanted to gather the eggs.  The pecking habits of setting hens were discouraging.  Mama always took care of them.  One day she went to check on fresh eggs and found a large chicken snake coiled in the hen's nest.

The chicken house was Mama’s domain.  Every farm wife raised chickens, and the egg and butter money was usually considered hers to keep or spend for whatever she liked.  I remember Mama giving me some of her ‘egg money’ to buy a special item for myself.

Children picking cotton in Texas, 1913

Cotton was the principal crop for Papa at that time.  Everyone in the family who was old enough had to help during grain threshing time and the cotton picking season.  I could hardly wait to get to the cotton patch.  I don't think they wanted me to go and pick because I was so little, not more than five years old, but I wanted to go so much that Mama made me a little cotton sack from a flour sack.  It had a strap attached to hang over my left shoulder.  In the beginning, Papa let me go ahead of him and pick from his row to fill my little sack.  When it was filled, Papa would empty it into his long duck cloth sack, which also hung over his shoulder with a strap.

One day, after I had been picking cotton for quite some time and the fun had worn off, instead of going back to the cotton patch with my family after lunch, I stayed in my playhouse and pretended I didn't know that they had gone back to the field.  They left without me; didn't even call.  After they had gone I began to feel guilty so I decided to go on to the cotton patch all alone to join my family.  It seemed a long way for me to go alone.

On the way to the field, I met a dog.  He barked at me and frightened me so much that I can almost see that dog now.  It was a medium-sized black dog and he barked like he was coming after me.  I don't know where he came from; he was just on the road.  I ran the rest of the way to my brothers and sisters.  That dog upset me so badly that I've always been afraid of dogs.  I never stayed behind again and always went with the group.

Hog butchering day was a day of hard work but it was also a social event to be shared with the neighbors.  After the hogs were cut and bled, they were put in a vat of boiling water.  Then the hair was scraped off the skin.  After the hams, shoulders, sides of bacon, spareribs and pork chops were cut, several days were spent grinding and sacking sausage and curing the meat.  Many people used only salt, but Papa often used a sugar cure recipe.  It was made of syrup, sugar, salt and spices. 

Hilling potatoes

When all of the meat had been preserved, the fat meat trimmings went into a large wash pot over the fire to be rendered for our cooking lard.  Nothing was wasted — delicious cracklings remained after the fat was cooked away. (Crackling is the crisp rind of pork left after the lard has been rendered.)  Mama also made lye soap from the fat.  Her soap was so good that a man paid a small amount of money for her recipe and then patented it.

Mama often took big dinners to the field during harvest.  There were no sandwiches like we have today.  The same kinds of meats and vegetables that were served on our dining table in the house were served in the field.  Most of what we ate was home grown then hilled, canned or dried for the winter.

Hilled sweet potatoes and turnips were especially good during the winter.  To hill the vegetables, Papa would place them in soil that he had built up six or eight inches high then covered them with shocks of grain and duck cloth.

I particularly remember one dinner in the field.  Our lunch had been spread on a red and white checked tablecloth that day, and after lunch the adults took a rest while we children played around the wagon.  My cousin, Walter, accidentally dropped an iron weight used to weigh cotton on my sister, Daisy's, head.  Blood came gushing out.  I thought he'd killed her.  He didn't, but she's carried that scar for over seventy years.

Today, when we watch the television news and become aware of all the crime and auto accidents, it's easy to believe that the time of my childhood was a time of little danger.  Such was not the case.  The dangers were simply different:  Mama's brother fell into some of the operating machinery at the cotton gin.  His arm was so badly mangled that he bled to death before a wagon and the best team of horses could get him to a doctor.  And cleaning the water wells could be a dangerous job.  I've heard of well cleaners who died of suffocation while working in a deep well.

There was also crime.  After the cotton was picked, it was time for Papa to take it to the gin.  He left home with the cotton early in the morning in a wagon drawn by horses or mules.  When he arrived, he had to wait his turn in line.  It was often dark when he returned home from the gin with money in his pockets.  I can still see Mama as she stood on the porch waiting and listening for any sound of Papa's return.  Robbery was not uncommon and Mama feared for Papa's life.

Dry goods peddler, circa 1900

Many of the things that we did not make or grow at home we bought from the peddlers who traveled in the area.  They seemed to sell everything — dry goods, hardware, notions and food.  I recall different times when Papa bought a stove, a sewing machine and a piano from various peddlers.  Two iron skillets went with the stove.  I remember the peddler demonstrating the strength of those skillets by beating them on the wheels of his vehicle.

Old Jim Banana, as he was called, came to our house practically every two weeks.  Papa paid twenty-five cents for three-dozen bananas each time he came.  Mama immediately gave three bananas to each of us.  I was the only one who didn't like bananas, and you might think I would have given my bananas to my brothers or sisters; but I didn’t.  I didn't share them.  They were mine!  It made me feel good to know that all of my brothers and sisters wanted something I had.  I held on to my bananas for as long as there was a bite left.  I ate them, and as a result, I learned to like bananas.

There was no compulsory school attendance law.  We children missed the first three months of school each year to get the cotton crop in.  This long absence and late start made it very difficult for us; it was a real challenge to keep up with our studies.  But the start of the fall term coincided with cotton-picking season, so the children in my family and many other students in the area could not start to school until all the cotton was in.  Because of our home study, we Hooten children never failed to pass our grade each year, even in high school.   Perhaps my attitudes toward school were primarily formed because of the importance my family placed on keeping up in spite of our three month absences.  The extra work was never considered an excuse to fail in school.  I cherished going to school and I did study hard. 

Although Papa had acquired a great deal of farming equipment, the biggest break for us and other children in the area came when he designed and built our cotton picker.  I don't know how Papa got his idea; it was before the cotton picker was in general use.  I'm sure his aptitude in mathematics must have played a great part in the construction.  I don't suppose the thought of securing a patent for his invention even entered his mind.  Papa's machine looked like a wagon bed with twelve pointed teeth in front.  The teeth stripped the cotton rows and provided more time for us children to attend school.