When I was ten years old my father bought a hundred and sixty acre farm with good rich soil in the Texas panhandle. It was located eight miles north of Lockney, which is between Plainview and Floydada. Part of the land had already been cultivated and there was a five-room house on the place.
In
August of 1912 we moved to our new home.
Papa went ahead of Mama and us children. He went on a freight train with our household furniture,
stock and farming implements. The rest
of our family spent the last night before our trip with my oldest sister,
Jessie.
I
admired Jessie. I was showing off
for her, imitating a friend by tossing my head about, when I jerked a crick
into my neck and was in pain from that sore neck for a full week.
This
trip with Mama on the train was a great adventure for us. We had not a care in the world — except
for my painful neck. I'll never
forget the good food on the train, especially the French bread. Daisy and I wore knee length dresses of
natural linen, trimmed in red.
They were made in Buster Brown style with long waistlines and big
collars. The dresses had been
bought just a short time before we moved.
Papa and Mama had gone on the train to Dallas to shop with a merchant we
knew in Oglesby and come home with a large trunk filled with appropriate
clothing for our trip.
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| Lockney, Floyd County, Texas, circa 1905 |
The
tenant farmer, Mr. Thompson, and his family were still living in the
house. It was early in the evening
when we arrived. Mrs. Thompson and
the children had gone to attend a community party. We began to explore and it was not long before we discovered
a tub of cow chips by the kitchen stove.
They were being used for fuel.
The house was clean but we did not like the odor of those cow chips; we
thought it was terrible. Ugh, cow
chips in the house! Imagination
got the best of Daisy, Rosa and me and we had to rush out of doors; it seemed
that the only place we could breathe was outside.
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| 1909 greeting card |
Although
it was not an unusual practice in that day, our family never used cow chips in
the kitchen. Papa did teach us to
live within our means, however, and that is exactly what those people were
doing.
While
waiting for the first three rooms of our new house to be complete enough to
move into, we lived in a large tent that Papa had purchased for the
purpose. Living outside was a
great adventure for us children; we got a glimpse of what real pioneer living
was like. We also enjoyed our new
playmates, the Thompson children.
Since Mama cooked three full meals each day, we felt free to eat the
leftovers during our afternoon tea parties with our new friends. But one day we got into Mrs. Thompson's
cornbread that had been intended for her evening meal. She had to use those cow chips to start
a fire and cook more cornbread. We
learned another lesson that day!
Our
house had seven rooms when it was finished. It was a single floor with a porch surrounding the west and
south sides. The house was painted
white with green window frames to match a green roof.
A
tall windmill pumped all the good, clear water we could use. The well was deep and cool water was
pumped into a barrel for family use.
A pipe led from the barrel to a milk trough where water was carried
through the lid of a box-like container and out the other end of the trough
through a pipe to a tank where the stock drank. In this box, between the family drinking barrel and a dirt
stock tank, our milk was kept cool and our butter firm.
My
father could not digest fresh milk but he could drink the buttermilk left after
the butter was churned. We
children all acquired a taste for good buttermilk. It is a favorite drink of mine today.
Our
favorite place to play was under the two big cottonwood trees growing on the
bank of that large dirt stock tank.
We dressed up sticks and, while playing church, we baptized the sticks
in the tank. I was just the right
age to watch my little brother, Doyle, for Mama, but sometimes it was hard to
keep up with him. He could be out of sight in a minute — and the first place
everybody looked was in the tank.
I
saw Mama come out of the house one day headed toward the milk box. She stopped in her tracks, a look of
pure panic on her face. I followed
her gaze to the top of our windmill where my eight-year-old brother Barney and
a friend stood on the platform at the very top. They were not the problem. On the ladder, nearing the top and climbing steadily, was
four-year-old Doyle. Mamma calmly
called to him, “Honey, stay right where you are. I’m coming up there.
Wait for me.” She climbed the windmill in her skirts and brought him
down.
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| Hooten Family in 1917 |
Baptist
and Methodist congregations shared the only church building. Each denomination alternated using the
building for Sunday school and church services twice a month plus other special
programs such as the religious revivals held by the churches.
The
schoolhouse was used to teach all students from grade one through high
school. These two buildings were
also used for Christmas celebrations, singing schools, 4-H club meetings, Girl
Scout meetings, box suppers or any other activity in need of a place to meet.
The
principal’s wife depended on Mama’s advice a great deal. I remember her phone call to Mama: “I have cooked some turnips and greens
with a worm in them. Will it make
us sick if we eat them?”
Bad
weather prevented us from attending school at times. I cherished those days because the whole family made candy,
popped corn and played games together.
We played many games with dominoes — but card games were not permitted
in our home. It was thought that
card games might induce gambling.
Card playing and dancing caused a few schoolteachers to lose their jobs.
I only remember one time
that my parents ever spoke out against a teacher, and it had nothing to do with
card playing. This particular man,
Mr. Lindley, was considered uncouth and unkind by both parents and
students. For punishment he kept
the older students after school.
This made it necessary for them to walk home late in the evening. It was almost dark a few times when
they got home. My father and the
other parents did not approve of that one bit. The teacher also made a practice of leaving the community on
Friday after school and was often late returning on Monday morning. One Monday morning while the students
awaited the arrival of their teacher, one of the older girls wrote the
following in the dust on the jacket of the big stove:
The devil goes from north to south
Carrying Lindley in his mouth:
When he found him such a fool,
He dropped him here to teach our school.
It
was against the rules to smoke at school.
My brother, Berry, and two other boys found some cigarettes and smoked
them while taking their horses to water.
The teacher smelled the smoke and decided to give them licks with his
green tree limb. As a little girl,
I was too frightened to even look, but some of the students counted the
licks. They said Berry got
sixty-two. The school board had
made a decision to fire Mr. Lindley on his next late arrival. Mr. Lindley was gone from our school
within two weeks of the time my brother was whipped.
In
addition to our three R’s my parents gave us excellent training in music. Mama played the organ and sang. She was also a good dancer but she
stopped dancing when she joined the Baptist church. The church considered dancing sinful, and Mama remained
faithful to church rules, so we children were not permitted to dance either.
Against difficulties and obstacles,
apparently insurmountable, he battled, until he [Enoch M. Hooten] had acquired
what may be denominated a fair education and had become a man of varied and
extensive reading. At the age of
seventeen he felt it to be his duty to preach and, in the fall of 1855 he was
received as a candidate for the ministry by the Flint River Presbytery at
Newnan, Georgia. At that time he
deemed effusion only to be Scriptural baptism, and was surprised to hear the
Presbytery then in session decide that it was unnecessary to sprinkle a Baptist
lady converted to Presbyterianism, even though she desired it, because in being
immersed by a Baptist, she had already received Scriptural baptism. He reasoned that if the Baptists are
wrong and the Presbyterians right, the lady ought to have been sprinkled; but
if immersion is Scriptural and valid baptism, as the Presbytery decided,
logically, sprinkling is not baptism.
He resolved to investigate the subject of baptism for himself, and this
he at once commenced to do. The
conclusion at which he arrived was in accordance with the views of Baptists,
and he therefore decided that a man with such convictions should not become a
Presbyterian minister, which idea was thenceforth entirely abandoned by him.
Uncle
Enoch still had some disagreement with other Baptist teaching and remained a
Presbyterian for the next fourteen years until (from the same source):
The War came on, and he joined the
ranks of his country’s defenders, and fought unscathed amid storms of shot and
shell, until smitten down at the battle of Fredericksburg. While lying in the hospital at that
city, helpless and dangerously wounded, light came to him in answer to prayer,
and he was enabled to discern the path of duty. The true Scriptural relations between faith and baptism,
between baptism and church membership, and between church membership and
communion were clearly discerned, together with his own personal duty, as a
Christian, to preach the everlasting Gospel, and he promised obedience to the
Lord, should he ever be permitted to reach home again. This occurred in 1863. The Lord brought him back to Georgia,
although for many months he was confined to his bed and was entirely helpless,
on account of his wound, and even when he was baptized on the seventeenth of September
1865, he was compelled to use crutches.
He
was soon ordained a Baptist minister, married, had a dozen children, and served
a number of churches in Georgia for many years.
My
Papa also shared Mama's love of music and this love was passed on to us
children. As a family, we sang together. Many times, after my father became ill,
he said, "Children, go play and sing me to sleep." Rosa played the piano, Barney played
the violin, Doyle and Daisy sang soprano and I sang alto.
Rosa
and Barney were the two best musicians in our family and can perform on several
musical instruments. Each of them
has composed music. Rosa was
particularly interested in church music; Barney headed up a country-western
band in Phoenix for years. All of
us children had fun singing together, especially at night.
Papa
was not musically talented but occasionally he held a kind of musical
instrument, made of metal, between his teeth and played by finger plucking a
piece that projected from it.
Though Papa would not sing in a group, he sang funny little songs like “Bill
Grogan's Goat:”
Bill Grogan's goat was feeling fine,
Ate three red shirts from off the line;
Bill took a stick, gave him a whack,
Bill took a stick, gave him a whack,
And tied him to the railroad track.
The whistle blew, the train drew nigh
Bill Grogan's goat was doomed to die
He gave a groan of awful pain
Coughed up the shirts and flagged the train.
Immediately
after attending a singing school at the age of thirteen, I was elected to sing
alto with a group of twelve adults.
It was quite an honor. When
we won the county banner and the district banner three years in succession, we
were given the district banner for keeps. It looked very large and beautiful to
me; I remember that it had twelve gold tassels. We presented it back to the district. The same group sang the fourth year and
won it again. That was my last
year to sing with the group because we moved.
Austria and Hungary declared war on Serbia July 28, 1914. World War I was triggered because a member of a Serbian secret society, “The Black Hand,” had shot an archduke and his wife. For various reasons Germany supported Austria and Hungary while France and Russia pledged support to Serbia.
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| Sister Jessie 1889-1921 |
Tragedy
found our family in another form.
My older sister, Jessie was heating oil on her stove when it began to
flame. As she removed the pan,
some of the oil spilled on her dress and flames ignited her clothing. Neither her face nor her hair was burned
but she was dead within seven hours from damage to her lungs. She was still very young and left two
young children; it was a great loss.
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| Willie Lee and friends at 'Dream Home' in Lockney |
As
I grew older, I enjoyed sewing, tatting, crocheting and embroidering and I sold
my fancy handiwork for enough money to pay for my music and expression lessons
for a full year. We called our
classes in oral literature "expression."
I
played basketball in high school and I loved every minute of it. The game was quite different from the
one you see today. We girls were
considered delicate creatures and unable to play the full length of the court,
so it was divided into three sections.
Two members of each team played in each section and were allowed to pass
the ball over the line; they were not allowed to put a foot into the next
section. I could shoot baskets and
was selected to be one of the two forwards on our team.
We
thought we cut quite striking figures in our basketball suits with their
knee-length black bloomers and big bow ties. I felt happier the day Mama got those bloomers for me than I
can ever remember feeling about getting a Sunday dress.
I
usually got along well with other students but I did not like Julia
Johnson. (There may have been a
little jealousy – she was the other forward on our basketball team.) Julia was strong-willed. Her grandmother accompanied our group
on a two-day trip to the county fair.
Against her grandmother’s wishes, Julia decided that she was going to
sleep outside on the ground. I’d
never heard an argument like the one that ensued between that grandmother and
grandchild. Julia threatened to
take poison – kill herself! Finally
her grandmother said, “Go ahead.
Sleep on the ground.” Julia
made her bed on an anthill and wound up completely miserable.
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| Lockney in 1921 |
When
I think of the events that gave me an opportunity to attend college they still
seem miraculous to me. (I believe
in miracles.) The move to Lockney
brought my miracle in the person of a young man. My marriage was the miracle that allowed me to attend
college and do all of the other things I most wanted to do.
Although
Papa longed for the farm and returned after only two years at Lockney, I'd had
enough time to meet my future husband.
 |
| Robert |
My
husband-to-be was nineteen years of age and I was eighteen when our romance
began on a Sunday evening after church services in Lockney. Robert said that when he first met me
he thought I was a teacher. I was
flattered because I was only a student.
We
had both attended a meeting of the Baptist Young People's Union that
evening. When the program was
over, Robert said that he had something important to tell me. He asked me to meet him in the foyer
after church.
 |
| Willie Lee |
He
didn't stop at the car; he rode all the way home with us. For some reason, Mama and Papa had not
attended church that evening. My
brother, Barney, who was about thirteen years old at the time, drove Robert and
me, along with my younger brother and sister, to our house; it was a little
less than a mile from the church.
Robert walked back to his house that night without ever mentioning what
he wanted to tell me. I don't know
what it was to this day.
In
addition to the other young man in the church foyer, there was another
diversion. A newspaper reporter
for the Lockney Beacon newspaper started dating me about the same time Robert
did. Several times the three eligibles
called on the same day for a date.
At first, the one who called first was the one accepted. But, finally, I was only interested in
seeing Robert. Of the three young men
I thought Robert to be the best man, one who would be a good father for the
children I hoped to have and last, but not least, he was the only man with whom
I fell in love.
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