Who, what, when, where?

Here are a couple of photos I found in the box of old family stuff. I recognize Jimmy and myself, of course, but who are the other people? I was thinking they were taken on the same occasion, just from the lawn chairs; but now I'm not so sure as the others don't look alike. Let me know and I'll add it to this post.

UPDATED 7/24/08 9:45PM MDT

I knew Jimmy would know who this was and where the picture was taken. Here's her post in reply to my question:

The four on the lawn chairs are me, Jug, Mike Davidson, and Diana Cahill. We're at the "cabin" (3 bedroom brick w/bay window) at Possum Kingdom lake owned by PICO Drilling Co. Mike rode down w/Daddy, Mother, and Jug because his ears were bad and he couldn't fly in a small plane. I went w/Jimmy Davidson, his wife Betty, and their little girl (and I can't think of her name right now) in a Cessna-type. That's the time I walked into Aunt Rube's and Joel asked me where Daddy was. When I said he wasn't there yet, Joel said, "Well, dammit, go home!!!".

The other picture was taken on the same trip. The Cahills--Carl, Wanda, Jimmy, and Diana-from Sonora. Carl owned Cahill's Construction Co. and did a world of work for Daddy down in that part of the world. I had a horrible crush on Jimmy. Carl was killed when he crashed the plane he was piloting about a year after Daddy died. Diana's husband was killed as well as the "real" pilot who was w/them. Carl had been flying his own plane for years.

It must have been another time that I flew in a small plane; it seems like we went all the way to Wyoming or something. I well remember that, as it was the first time I had ever been in an airplane in my life. It was pretty exciting, especially as I seem to remember that we had to land unexpectedly in some field, and wait while someone brought a part and the engine was repaired. Possum Kingdom is a big reservoir just west of Dallas/Fort Worth (and actually, before this last trip to Texas this summer, I didn't realize how far east it was). We went there once or twice; I was pretty small but I remember swimming and boating, which was likewise something pretty unique in my expericences, Roy Lee not being much for doing things outdoors. Here's a photo of Possum Kingdom from a website:

So now who was the other person whose ranch we used to go to? Was Possum Kingdom the site of the infamous giant catfish, nests of rattlesnakes and cottonmouths, scorpions in the pool, and all of that? Or was that somewhere else? Sonora, Texas? It must be because I see by the map that it's near Ozona, Texas, another name that rings a bell.

Guest post from Guinn!

Here's a guest post from Guinn, about her early memories. I've added a couple of corrections that she sent later:

We really moved around a lot until 1940. We didn't stay long, but when a rig was stacked we would head either for McNary or Breckenridge, Profitt or Olney. Aunt Jack was in the same boat we were in and a lot of the time the two families lived together. We went back to Pyote at least 4 times and to Monahans 3. I"m not sure about where Mom and Dad lived right at first. Except that she told me that Grandma Webb charged her for Daddy's room and board after they married. As well as I can remember right after I was born they moved into a tiiny house across a large garden from the hotel. Jewell was working at Bernices Dress Shop in Olney. We were there when at about 6 months I got sick and wasn't given any time to live, probably wouldn't last out the night, but of course I did. We spent time with Dell, Ruby, Grandma Webb and then would go to Grandma Carroll"s. We were in Olney in 1934 when Daddy decided to go to Pyote. We loaded up the car, I can remember making the trip sitting high up in the back seat because someone went with us. I don't know who. But it was a friend, not a relative. It was in the spring, and I started school in the fall. Jack and Nick were there because Benny and I were in the same room. Actually 3 grades were in the same room. We moved from there into Monahans but it wasn't long before we were back in Pyote and sometime during that time Aunt Lil got her back hurt and Mother took me out of school and put me in school in Canutillo. We were probably there a couple of months and Aunt Jack wrote Mom and said that if she wanted a marriage she better get home. We went home. There was a train from Monahans to El Paso and we were on it a lot.

I never went to school in Olney, but I went in Graham and Stamford and Breckenridge. Not for any long times ever and I can remember crying myself sick because I had to start going in Graham. Finally I started the stomach ache bit and all I got out of that was a dose of castor oil mixed with orange juice and some soda stirred in to make it foam. And when I finished throwing up I went to school. We spent one summer in St.Jo. It's up above Wichita Falls almost to Oklahoma. Randall was not walking so it had to be 1938. It was a pleasant summer. The town was built around a park and we stayed at a boarding house and Mom didn't have to cook or wash the sheets and towels. It was about the time Monopoly got popular and Mom and Daddy and some of the crew, Daddy wasn't drilling, would play Monopoly a lot. And they would buy watermelons and cool them in a river close to where they were drilling.

That ended and we went to Grandma Carroll's. I went to school in Ft Hancock. Had to ride the bus and Jimmy was in high school and he was great to see that I was on the bus before he left with his friends. I've probably gotten my cart before my horse in through here because before 1940 I stayed at Ruby's and went to school in Breckenridge. Mom and Dad went to Dell's. Probably got tired of Ben saying If we run out of food, poor old Uncle Ben will go to the store. The only thing that made that bearable for me is that Billy Dean was always there for me. We rode the bus together and he played with me at recess. Believe me I was miserably shy, always the new student, and I spent a world of time crying. While I was there the teacher put me up a grade and my world went to crap and I sobbed until I was put back to the same grade as Billy Dean. It wasn't one of my best years. Later on Mother breezed back and got me out of school about 6 weeks early. They said why not, she could have left when we put her up a grade.

I think this is when we went to Monahans again and the reason I think that is that Mom and Dad went to Ruby's from Monahans for a sort of reunion and that's when Mother wore the shorts in the picture. Really it was sort of scandalous. When we would make a potty stop she had a skirt that buttoned down the front and matched her shortsuit. She would put it on every time. And that was probably late 38 for Randall was a baby. Shorty got in touch with the folks and told them he was going to Calif and Mom and Dad could manage the cafe he had been managing. So being that the oil field was kaput, and I have to wonder how the friend Jug has found can think that Olney was not affected by the depression because I know Daddy looked for work there every time the rigs went down in West Texas. We lived in Fabens seems like for ages, probably it wasn't all that long. I had a horrible case of chicken pox there, missed about a month of school and Mom and Dad wore completely out. Mother worked the cafe by herself all day and Daddy worked it all night. 24/7.


And right after school was out in 1940 we went to Seminole. I can't remember Daddy being out of work after that. We were in Seminole mid 40 to 41 and moved to Sundown right before my 10th birthday. I was in 5th grade then. While in Sundown the schools in that county went to 12 grade system and I was promoted from the 5th to the 7th grade. That summer we lived in Lubbock. We lived in a large apartment house on College Ave. Jack and Nick and Benny lived in the same apartment house and when we moved back to Sundown, they went to Monahans, I went the 7th grade in Sundown. The first full year of school I had gone in the same place. I started 8th grade in Sundown. Then the rig went to Big Lake. By this time we were well into the war. Big Lake had bad gowing pains and we were in a hotel for ages before we could find a place to live. I went to school there and they were still 11 grade system and I really had to work because I had done 6th grade work in the 7th grade and actually skipped 7th grade. Math about killed me. Daddy worked evening tour and I would do my math homework and leave it out for him to check when he got in at midnight. That's where Daddy ate the coconut cream pie and got so very sick.


We had gotten a dog named Pluto and he was a cocker spaniel that hadn't had his tail cut off. We noticed that he was really getting slick and fat and looking good, and it was because he was getting into the landlord's hen house and sucking eggs. So we took him to Dell's We left there early too, I got out of school early and we moved to Levelland, We had a really neat apartment, Mom and I were happy, so we moved to Seagraves. We were only there a few summer months and moved back to Levelland. Only this time we couldn't find a nice apartment and wound up living in that duplex where there was a hole in the porch and became one of Randall's favorite stories. We got Pluto back and he got hit by a car and was in a cast and slept in the trailer we had and howled everytime he turned over and Mom was big pregnant and getting up all hours of the night and turning him over. Lil stayed with us for several months before Jimmy was born. Randall started kindergarden and I started 9th grade only to find that since I was back in a 12 grade system I had already done all of everything and so that was my easiest year and I had earned it. I loved the school at Levelland. I had a lot of friends.

Daddy got into a run in with the tool pusher and wham! he got run off and within a week he was called up to take a [draft] physical. We just knew he would have to go. But he had flat feet and didn't. So he found another job on a rig and it wasn't long until the rig moved to Monahans. So in the middle of my sophmore year we went to Monahans. I hated the house, the school, Mother and Dad for making me move, Daddy for buying an ugly little dump of a house that I was so ashamed of. So I spent another really bad year crying a lot. I went to work at the movie and made friends there and by my Junior year I was ok. I got married in March of 1950 and Daddy was already working in Snyder and they moved in April. George and I stayed in Monahans. They went to Snyder, Portales and Brownfield and George went to work for Daddy in November of 50 and we moved to Brownfield. Rodger was born there on January 27, 1951 and we all moved to Farmington when he was 3 weeks old. They stayed in Farmington until the summer before Susan was born.

In December of that year George and Rod and I moved to Ignacio, Colorado and back to Aztec and to Farmington and to Ignacio and back to Aztec and to Warm Springs and back to Aztec and back to Ignacio and then to Aztec and Susan was born in January of 55 and we moved to Boulder Wyoming. Daddy was pushing tools in Rock Springs and he told George he had a drilling job for him in Pinedale. Teresa was born in Jan of 56. We were there until the fall of 56 and went to Casper. The rig was moving to Texas and we really didn't want to go so George went to Farmington. We didn't stay there very long. I just flat couldn't take it, so we went back to Rock Springs where Mom and Dad still were. George decided moving with a rig was not really working for us wth 3 kids and he worked roughnecking until he got hired by Baker and Darned if they didn't send us right back to Farmington. Karen was born there in May of 58 and in November we moved to Cody.

We stayed there until Jan of 61 and moved to Worland. In Sept of 64 we went to Vernal Utah and the big joke was that I had to be dragged there. Each of our kids was born in a different state and I wasn't about to set out to a new state. But it wasn't true, I only cried for a month this time. We were there 10 years. And we made a lot of good friends and enjoyed the place. In 74 we moved to Rock Springs Wyoming. What a different world that was. Many many stories from there. And in 80 on Halloween night we arrived at 15964 E Bates Place, Aurora Colorado. We were there 6 years. There were good times and there were bad times. We've been in Loveland for 22 years. Probably both of us will die here. And that suits us fine.

Sort of like quicksand...

I know there's a way to link back to an earlier post, but I'm not sure just what that way is, so in this case I'll just refer you back to the earlier post on the Webb siblings, Roy Lee's grandparents, brothers, and sisters. You don't have to scroll up and down, you can use the "blog archive" bar on the left side of the page to go right to an older one, in this case the one on "Lolar May Webb." I'll update it with some early census information that Randall sent the other day.

More Perceptions

UPDATED WITH NEW PHOTO 7/23/08 9:30AM MDT


While I was swimming today I was thinking about this (and swimming is amazingly liberating in that regard; as you go back and forth, back and forth, in the pool, your mind wanders off into all sorts of things. I could never do that with exercise before; when I tried running or working out, all I could think of was how sweaty and painful and unpleasant it was).

But anyway, as I said, I was thinking about this and decided to post some more pictures to illustrate this point even further, if not to drive it into the ground and break it off. Besides, no one else is doing any writing although I've gotten a few stories and am working them into another post. And hey!, it's my blog and that's the point of a blog, being totally self-indulgent and doing what you dang!well please.

So first, here's a photo of Roy and Ruth when Guinn was little, probably about 1935 or so:



OK, now one with Randall, say about 1942:


And one with Jimmy as a child, 1947:


OK, finally, one with me, about 1956 or so (and it appears that Mom is offering me some kind of bribe, probably to shut me up so that whomever can take the picture). I didn't have one from this period with both Mom and Dad and me, that I could easily find:




So here are the two of them as I remember them; this was taken in 1969, a year before he died. This is what I see when I think of "Mom and Dad":





So what's the point of this? Only that in writing this family history blog, it's almost like you have to compile four separate family history blogs; and that's just for us! Both of my kids, Rachel and Sarah, are constantly amazed by how many cousins they have; I know for a fact that there is no way I could begin to name second and third and however many cousins you can go on the consanguinity of cousins before they become total strangers. As I was looking through the photos I had, there were many of the Jordan kids, with whom I spent a great deal of time growing up. As we go along I'll include a few posts about them, and who knows, maybe one of them will see this and want to respond.

Perceptions

Jimmy brought up a very interesting point about this whole effort, namely that given the great disparity in our ages--21 years between Guinn, the oldest, and myself, the youngest--as well as the fact that there are gaps of eight years, five years, nine years, between the rest of us, our perceptions of our parents, not to mention the other members of the family, are very, indeed vastly, different. I remember them mostly as old people, with grandchildren my age. I played with nieces and nephews who were my age, and cousins who were actually second cousins. My aunts and uncles were far older than I was at the time I knew them, so my perceptions are going to be very different from Guinn's, Randall's, and Jimmy's, and theirs will likewise differ from each other. One case in point that illustrates this very well is Guinn's comment about Ruth Mae, our mother. She was a very different person before Roy Lee died in 1970, very fun-loving and ready to enjoy life. Guinn wrote of her in a 1997 email:


"Mother wasn't the same person after Daddy died so they [her children] really didn't know Mom either. ... Mother was chosen to go with my senior class to New Orleans on our senior trip [right after WW II? -RW]. She was very well liked by my friends. She worked like the dickens at our senior shack. She was a lot of fun. She too us to all the out of town football games when I was a senior. And when [the other kids] were small she was always wanting to go on a picnic. One of my fondest memories is of the time we all went to Purgatory [Colorado] to go on a picnic and couldn't find any spot and we kept looking and looking and daddy (he wasn't of the picnic mentality) kept growling and growling about Mary Joyce and Mother and Baptists and picnics. We finally found a spot and made some coffee and he calmed some. But Mother was really enjoying herself. And she loved to play Wahoo! I remember she'd land on your space and would be so sorry that she just had to send you back...All except Teresa. On Teresa's spot she would never land. But what I'm saying is that the lady was fun. She had a good sense of humor and there was nothing she wouldn't for her kids and grandkids. One her her favorite expressions was that she'd go through Hell to get one of us a stick of gum. [...] And she loved to play the slots. She went with us to Vegas twice and to Bullhead several times. She'd carry her cup of nickels around and she loved it."

This is so true; when you look at all these family photos, as I've been doing lately, she always has a smile and just a look of fun. Indeed, when I was younger I never remember her being down in the dumps; she'd get after me about being a slacker teenager, which indeed I was, but she was always ready to go somewhere, to drive me to a friends house, to cook something up for me and my friends, to go on a picnic. As Guinn says, all that changed after Roy Lee died in 1970. After the funeral and all was over and everyone went back to their families, homes, and jobs, I was there with Mom, and she was devastated by Roy's sudden loss. She keened; I don't think I'd ever given that verb ["keen (kēn) : Irish: a wailing for the dead; dirge [...] lament or wail for the dead; to make a wailing, shrill, or mournful sound suggestive of a keen"] any thought before but that's just what she did, rocking and keening. This went on for weeks, and after a while I just couldn't stand it anymore. Even after we moved to Vernal, she never seemed the same; always a sense of loss, a shadow, a sigh. They had just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary a month before he died, so of course she did feel a great sense of loss and there's no gainsaying that. We all did. But I guess I was, at 17, ready to get on with my life--now that I didn't have much choice anyway--and wanted her to Just Get Over It. Harsh, I know, and I'm ashamed to say it colored my relationship with her until she passed away almost two decades later. It's one of the things that affects my own relationship with my own kids, in what I hope is a favorable way. Ah well.

Carroll sisters

Another good photo, this one of all of Ruth Mae's sisters and her mother. This had to be extracted from a Word document that Randall sent, so it's a bit fuzzy, but I really like it as it seemed to capture all of their characters. Left to right they are: Florence "Maggie" Carroll, the mother; Lil, Ruth, Ruby, Jack, Jessie, Dell. As I noted before, I never knew Jessie nor Grandma Carroll, but the others I knew to varying degrees. The picture of Lil, smiling, posing, really strikes me as her; she was always fun-loving, flirtatious, full of laughter and ready for a good time. Ruth Mae, our mother, also has a smile and is ready for a joke or a laugh, as she was until our father died in 1970. Ruby looks guarded, unsmiling; Jack is likewise smiling and happy, but is there a hint, a foreshadow, of tragedies to come? Jessie, what was she like? No idea. Finally, Dell, on the end, looks remarkably like Ruby in this shot; they could be twins (and indeed I'm not sure I got those two in the right order), and they both look exactly like their mother. Ruby and Dell I remember fairly well, but by the time I knew them they were much older than this. Still, even in this shot, it seems that they both look careworn, Ruby with a husband who was in poor health and a disabled son, Dell from a life of near-poverty and a whole herd of kids of her own.

Now here's another one:

This also came out of the same Word document, and is from an old and damaged print (not sure where the original is). As Randall said, "In this picture it is everyman for himself. I think the smallest is Lillian, first row left is Ruth. Second row left is Aunt Jack (Maude Almeda). The tallest is either Grandmother Carroll or the grand mother of the girls! The other three are probably Ruby, Dell and Jessie." Actually, I was thinking that the one on the far right, second row, was Jack; but the others it's hard to make out. But at any rate, if Randall is right, and the girl in the striped dress with the little collar is Ruth Mae, she looks about eight to ten years old; that would date this photo at about 1916-1918 or so.

I've never really heard much about my mother's early life; she used to say that they were very poor, that they were all forced to work from an early age, picking cotton for one thing, which she described as backbreaking labor. Here's a quote from Guinn:

"[I]n Mom's case there was crushing poverty. I know she had to stay out of school every fall to pick cotton. When Grandpa [Carroll] was young there was land everywhere for the working and I have often wondered why he never took advantage of it. Everything he did was like sharecropper or working for wages. "

I know that Mom had a constant ringing in one ear; when I asked her about it one time, she told me that her father had gotten mad at her for something and hit on the side of the head with his cupped hand, damaging her eardrum.

Roy Lee Webb early photo

This is kind of out of sequence, if I'm trying to post on the Carroll side of the family, but this photo was very intriguing. It shows Roy Lee Webb at the age of about one or two, maybe? What struck me about it is the background. Not the dress; I've heard that it was common for babies, up to a certain age, to be dressed like this regardless of gender. But it's what's on the ground that strikes me. Does that look like snow? He was born in November 1908 in Jack County, Texas, but does it ever snow there?

UPDATE 7/18/08 9:50AM MDT

Dorman Holub of the Young County Historical Commission wrote in answer to a query along the same lines, namely, does it snow in Young County, Texas:

"To answer your inquiry, 'yes' we get lots of snow. Its very sporadic. In the time period of your [father], Salt Creek used to freeze over and people would skate on the ice. In 1923, someone got their Model T out on Lake Eddleman - I suspect its still there."

Early Carroll family photo

I found this photo in the files that Becci had compiled a few years ago, and found it intriguing. There's no provenance; I have no idea where the photo came from, where it was taken, or by whom. All I have is a laser print, off a regular printer (although it's still pretty good for all that). Given the print, and the age of the people, it's hard to see any real family resemblances, or at least it is for me, except in the parents. So how would James and Maggie have paid for a family photo? A couple of questions come up regarding the identifications:

-The father's name is wrong; it's James Albert.
-A note from Becci on one print says that Ruth Mae is the infant in her mother's arms, nine months old. That would put the date of this photo at January 1910.
-Who is Bill? As far as I can tell there are no "Williams" among this family.
-Elmer would be Samuel Elmer, known as "Shorty."
-If that is indeed Florence "Maggie" Carroll's mother in the background, that would be Mary Margauritte [so it's spelled the only place I've seen her mother's name] Campbell Cobb.

At any rate, an interesting photo...

UPDATE 7/17/08 10:50AM MDT

In a comment, Randall speculates that " 'Bill' could very well be Dell since the position named is probably a girl and not a boy. This based on the way the kids are divided around the parents. That may make the infant in Maggie's arms Aunt Lillian Leota." However, if it is Dell--and I agree that the way the kids are arranged, girls on one side, boys on the other, would suggest that it is her--that wouldn't change the order as he suggests, and could still mean that the infant-in-arms is Ruth Mae. I'd really like to know the provenance of this photo: where was it taken, when, and so on. It's the archivist in me.

blog administrivia

I've been wrestling with how to manage updates so everyone doesn't have to go back and read my sparkling prose over and over to make sure I haven't said anything about them in an update. Jimmy had a good suggestion, that whenever there's an update I'll note the date and time, so you will know; she also suggested that I use a different font, which I might try out. I for one love sans serif fonts, and have a real thing against Times New Roman, which all of this has been done in so far. I don't want to go back and re-do all of them, however. Blogger only likes certain fonts and I'm not sure which ones they are yet. Please let me know of any suggestions for improvements or things you'd like to see discussed, and again, if anyone wants to guest post, go therefore and do likewise!

The Carrolls

UPDATED 7/15/08 9:15 MDT
UPDATES WITH MORE BIRTH, DEATH, AND MARRIAGE DATES 7/16/08 8:45 MDT

I've been meaning to write a post on the Carroll side of the family, but have gotten stalled for a number of reasons. One is that I've been busy with, you know, work and family and life in general, and the other, more to the point, is that my own memories of the Carroll family--our mother's side--are much more plentiful, so much so that I don't think I could put them all in one post. For whatever reason, as I was growing up we spent a lot more time with the Carrolls than with the Webbs. I know this might not be true for all of us, but it certainly is for me. For one thing, both Webb grandparents died before I was born or when I was a baby, as did Grandma Carroll. Grandpa Carroll is the only one I remember. For another, as noted in some of the comments and earlier posts, for one reason or another my parents, Roy Lee and Ruth Mae, seemed to spend more time with her family than his.

So, before I launch into full ramble mode, here is some brief information about the Carrolls, starting with my mother's grandparents, Alfred Miles Carroll, born 1842 in Weakley, Giles County, Tennessee, died Conroe, Texas, April 7, 1917; and Tennessee Eudora Cardwell Carroll, born ca. 1845 in Nashville, Tennessee, died Marshall, Oklahoma, in 1910. They were married October 9, 1862, but there's no record of where. Here's a photo of them:

Family legend has it that Tennessee Eudora was mostly American Indian, Cherokee-Choctaw, although no one that I know has ever tracked that down through tribal records. Also, she was blind by the time this photo was taken (not sure when that was but it was almost certainly in the late 19th or early 20th centuries; she died in 1910 at the age of 65.) Again, if I find out more about them I'll update this although that's a bit outside the scope of this blog as we've defined it.

OK, more to the point are my grandparents Carroll, James Albert Carroll, born Sept. 20, 1871, in Missouri, died March 10, 1961, in Seminole, Texas; and Florence Adeline (or is it Magdelene? Her nickname given on one record is "Maggie," which would make you think it was, and one pedigree chart shows that name) Cobb, born Sept. 18, 1875, and died January 12, 1954. They were married January 31, 1895. Here's a picture of them, seated, with my aunt Dell (I think) on the left, my mother in the center, and my aunt Jack on the right in the back.



From the print, the car in the background, and the general look, I'd be willing to bet that this was taken at the Carroll's 50th wedding anniversary in January 1945, the same time as a photo in an earlier post. James Carroll, always known to everyone as "Pop" Carroll, looks very much as I remember him, even though this was taken some years before I was born. When I was between say six and ten years old, when we lived in Midland, Texas, for a few years, we would often go to visit with him in Seminole, Texas, which at the time was also where Aunt Jack and Uncle Nick lived. I don't remember much about the house he lived in--he might have lived with Jack and Nick for all I know--but I do know it was small, although we always had a great time as kids there, and always looked forward to visiting Jack and Nick if not Pop Carroll. Later, he came to live with us in Midland, where he took over my room, to my dismay, and slept in my bed, with a coffee can next to the bed to spit tobacco juice into. Needless to say, I was totally grossed out by this. The other memory of him that I have at that time was that he would sit in a chair in the sunken living room watching the old black and white TV; his favorite was a show called "Highway Patrol," with Broderick Crawford. He mostly watched in silence but I remember him yelling at the TV now and then, and yelling at us to be quiet. He also had the coffee can for spitting, and his canes, which he would use to whack any kid who came near. I got it a few times before I learned to avoid being around him. He must have moved back to Seminole, as he died there in 1961, a couple of years before we moved back to Farmington, New Mexico, in 1962. I don't remember going to his funeral--I was eight years old--although I must have. Likewise I have no memories at all of Grandma Carroll, Florence; she died when I was less than two years old. I'll leave memories of her to others. I heard later that he was not the most pleasant of persons, to put it mildly, that he was usually out of work and sometimes mean; but again, that's something best left to people who actually remember more than a coffee can full of nasty spit and a swinging cane.

OK, now for a list of my mother's siblings, courtesy of Randall and the files that Becci compiled some time ago. Some of them I knew only by their nicknames, only learning their real names many years later. Those are given in parentheses at the end. Not sure why these nicknames were applied but it carried over to my generation. Here they are, in chronological order:

Samuel Elmer Carroll (Shorty), born June 16, 1896 in Oklahoma, died Feb. 16, 1977 in Barstow, California
Edgar Ora Carroll, born January 22, 1897 (or '98), died Dec. 5, 1929
Claude Wilmont Carroll, born Nov. 27, 1899 in Powell, Oklahoma, died July 13, 1969, in Denton, Texas
Mary Eudora Carroll (Rubie--Ruby?; various spellings), born Dec. 7, 1900, died January 4, 1992, in Austin, Texas
Lena Eloise Carroll (Jessie), born March 1, 1904, died Sept. 25, 1952
Maude Almeda Carroll (Jack) , born Sept. 5, 1905, died Feb. 1976
Della Estella Carroll (Dell), born Feb. 21, 1907, in Tupelo, Oklahoma, died may 17, 1989, in Olney, Texas
Ruth Mae Aline Carroll, born April 20, 1909, died January 14, 1989
Tommy Cleo Carroll, born October 23, 1911, died December 25, 1935
Lillian Leota Carroll (Lil), born Jan. 9, 1914, in Breckenridge, Texas, died March 18, 1992, in Farmington, New Mexico
James Clinton Carroll, born Sept. 16, 1921 (the only one still living)

I should modify what I said about knowing them: I really knew the aunts, save for Aunt Jessie (pictured at right), who died about a week before I was born, and of course uncles Edgar, who died in 1929 I think in an industrial accident, and Tommy, who died in 1935, although I often heard the story of the latter's tragic death in a car wreck on Christmas morning, 1935. I'd need to get the full story of that from someone who knows it better, but the gist of it is that they were coming back to McNary, Texas, from visiting family in Fort Hancock, Texas, on Christmas Day. There was a rollover near Ysleta, Texas (which is now a suburb of El Paso) and Tommy was thrown from the car and killed. Roy Lee was also in the car and suffered severe injuries to his back; he was taken to El Paso where he was in the hospital for quite some time. Aunt Lil's husband, Wilmer Freeman, was also in the wreck but not injured, so far as I've ever heard. Tommy was only 24 at the time and apparently well-loved, so his loss was a family tragedy.

UPDATE:

In a comment from Guinn, she gives this story:

"Daddy, Wilmer and Tommy were coming back from partying in or around El Paso. The family was at McNary. The guys were drunk. They hit the side of a bridge and Tommy was killed. I wasn't in the wreck, I was home listening to Grandma and Aunt Jack scream and moan over the fact that he had been killed. The Carroll girls didn't hold back in emergency situations. Mother and Lil were very calm, even before we knew who was killed. We had no phone. There was a cafe and filling station at McNary. First we got the message that there had been a wreck, but no one knew who was killed. Grandma went into a moaning swoon saying 'Please God don't let it be Tommy.' Babs and I were bug eyed. We certainly didn't want to hear grandma pray that one of our Dads was the one killed. Mom and Lil went to the cafe and waited for more info. It was Tommy, and it was a scene I will never forget."

Guinn about the time Tommy was killed, 1935

Guinn would have been not quite five years old when this happened; it really does seem like the type of experience you could never forget. I can attest to the statement "the Carroll girls did not hold back in emergency situations," which makes me laugh as I write it. One time when I was probably eight I gashed my finger with a pocketknife, requiring several stitches; Aunt Jack happened to be visiting at the time and I still remember the wailing and carrying on; it scared the daylights out of me, making me think it was a lot worse than it was.

I only vaguely remember uncles Shorty and Claude; they visited us a couple of times but I have only the most hazy impressions of either of them. In a later comment Jimmy noted: "I don't think Uncle Claude ever visited us. [Roy Dale] may have seen him at Grandpa's funeral. The same is true for Uncle Shorty. He was in Seminole for a few days when Pop was operated on for kidney cancer and then came back after Pop's funeral long enough to get everyone really upset."

When it comes to the rest of them, however--Aunt Jack, Aunt Ruby, Aunt Dell, and Uncle Jimmy--I have very distinct memories; but this post is long enough already so I'll stop here and start a new one on that later on.

Toast

UPDATED

We had company all weekend so I wasn't able to get to the computer, let along write anything for this, but I did think of one thing: Sunday morning I was making breakfast and decided to make toast, the type that we in the El Rancho branch would call "daddy toast," as opposed to the variety made, you know, in a toaster. That made me reflect that practically until I was in college, I had no idea that there were things called "toasters." To me toast was made in a frying pan, you spread butter on one side of a piece of white bread and basically fried it until it was done, then turned it over and ate it with either apple butter or with powdered cinammon mixed with sugar. Toast furthermore had to have a yellow-brown color and had to have a hole in one corner of the piece of bread, where it had been lifted with a knife. But I also remember variations and disagreements on how this should be done, such as: should it be crispy or "limp?" Should it be toasted on one side only, or on both sides? Apple butter, some other jam, or cinammon/sugar? Funny how the simple act of frying a piece of bread in a pan can bring back such memories.

UPDATE:

It must be near lunch and I'm dieting, so it's hard not to reminisce about food...

Other food-related memories: this last weekend we had company and as I was cooking at home, I was joking about sayings I remember from Ruth: the most famous was when we were all talking and she would say "Let your food stop your mouth!" It might have been someone else saying that but in my mind it's her. Another was more from the Lacys, "eat it or wear it!" born, I think, from frustration with my own extreme food pickiness when I would visit them in the summers. I was a teenager before I knew that spaghetti wasn't a type of soup made with pasta and tomato juice. I think it was when Jimmy came home from college, maybe, and introduced the concept of spaghetti noodles with an actual sauce that you poured over them, something that was at first viewed with great suspicion and distrust. Everyone knew that spaghetti was made with tomato juice and noodles! Heresy! For a long time she claimed the title of family spaghetti queen, although I would dispute that now. Another food that none of us would dare think of eating now, but was a standard, was salt pork, biscuits, and gravy. To this day I absolutely love biscuits and gravy and often get them in a restaurant for breakfast--and even occasionally make them at home--but the salt pork, whew! Total cholesterol bomb. I remember Roy Lee loved it though, and it seemed we had it a couple times a month at least. He also loved buttermilk, with saltine crackers broken up and mixed into them. I've often said, perhaps unfairly so, that everything my mother cooked was fried. You put grease, usually Crisco or bacon drippings, into a frying pan and put whatever you were going to cook into it and cooked until done. And "done" is the operative word; stories about Ruth's aversion to any kind of beef or pork--and chicken goes without saying--with even the slightest tinge, the very hint, of pink, are universal throughout the family. She even went so far as to sometimes move from a table in a restaurant so that she wouldn't have to see someone eating a medium rare steak, or hold her menu in front of her face. So needless to say that everything she cooked for us at home as I was growing up was done, if not dead. But she did produce stuff that tasted good, probably to my later detriment, but oh well! "Fast moving hamburgers," hash browns, the aforementioned biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, chicken-fried steak (which I've not learned the secret of, although I recently heard it has somethng to do with double-dipping before frying), and fabulous fudge and fudge-covered chocolate cakes. I don't remember eating salads very much, although we might have. The only salad related memory is of having dinner with the Jordans in Farmington, with Jimmy and Ken, and of Ken going to shake the salad dressing but failing to secure the top back on the bottle, so on the first shake it went all over the table and whoever was sitting nearby. To me, as a teenager (pre-teen?) that was the height of hilarity, but I know Jimmy was upset. Likewise, I can't remember cooking out, as is so common today, grilling steaks or hamburgers or anything else, unless it was one of those rare occasions when we went somewhere and had a picnic, or were at someone else's house. I'd be hard-pressed to remember a single time that Roy Lee cooked out over a grill in the backyard of any house.

The most universal food memory, though, is of popcorn and Coke. It's all said that way as a single phrase, "popcorn'n'coke," no matter if you drank orange soda or root beer or whatever; it will always be popcorn'n'coke to me. In those days of course you made popcorn by putting the corn from the bag into a covered saucepan of hot oil/crisco/grease, then shaking it when the kernels began to pop. It was always a trick to time it to the very last kernel before it started to burn, for burned popcorn not only tasted awful and smelled up the house, you were exposed to the approbation of the rest of the people eagerly anticipating popcorn. Not that I usually cooked it, as I was small, but the sound and smell and taste of fresh-cooked popcorn is something that I still treasure and value. And I dearly love popcorn to this day, and can hardly go to a movie without it; it almost seems sacrilegeous. I have been able to eat it in a theater without getting a coke--because of health concerns and the damage done to your system by high-fructose corn syrup--but only rarely and then it seems diminished somewhat.

Rodger is the one in the family with talent (it would be rude to say pretentions!) of being a cook, and indeed he is a wonderful and creative cook. He should write a blog post or an email about it and I'll post it here. At my house we always joke that cooking with Rodger is like cooking with Becci's mother Annaliese: the food is great but they use every pot in the house.

"Dago" Webb, sports star

UPDATED!

Olney High School football team, 1920s.
Roy Lee "Dago" Webb is in the center of the back row.

I’d always heard that Roy Lee was a good football player, but I’ve recently learned that he played baseball too. I never remember him watching sports on TV, however, all the time I was growing up, and indeed the sports gene seems to have skipped a generation. Rodger Lacy was a star athlete, our daughter Rachel played soccer until she sought out the bright lights of the theater, and our other daughter, Sarah has been a dedicated soccer player since the 2nd grade and has tried swimming, basketball, and track and field. Both of Ken and Jimmy’s kids, Patrick and Cullen, played football all through school. But I never cared anything about sports myself, nor did any of my siblings although I know that Guinn follows various teams; and of course Jimmy is married to a coach and All-American college football player. But Randall never cared much about sports of any kind as far as I know.

All this is by way of introduction to Roy “Dago” Webb, star athlete at Olney High School in the 1920s. Somehow I had it in my head that he had left school in the 9th grade, but I was disabused of this notion at the recent family reunion, where I learned that he attended high school so that he could play sports until he was 20 years old! I further heard that the reason he had little interest in football was because during one game, he and his friends decided to “take out,” in today’s terms, someone they didn’t like, so they all tackled this person at the same time, injuring him permanently. Enough to put you off your game. But he was apparently good enough to be offered a scholarship to Decatur College; not sure whether this is Decatur, Texas, home of the World Oldest Community College, or the more famous one in Georgia. "He also had an offer to play semi-pro baseball for a team sponsored by an oil company," again according to Jimmy, who got all this straight from Roy Lee himself.

But football and baseball weren't the only games; according to Jimmy, he also played basketball, ran track, and was a member of the Glee Club, the latter being "the reason for his popularity w/the girls." In the 1926 O-Hi, the Olney High School yearbook referred to below, he does not show up on the basketball team nor the track team--maybe he did that earlier in his high school career; he was 18 when the yearbook was made and might have already graduated (as noted below, his picture isn't in the Seniors section). Or perhaps he wasn't there for the picture that day. Nor is there a section for a Glee Club, which, according to Wikipedia is a choir composed "historically of men but also of just women or mixed voices, which traditionally specializes in singing short songs." There is however a Pep Squad in the O-Hi, but it's all girls (one of which is his sister Lura). There are proportionally more female names than males on the signature page, which is some evidence that he was indeed popular with the girls.

Guinn has recently sent a 1926 O-Hi, the annual of Olney (Texas) High School. It’s really fun to look through, but noticeable by his absence is Roy Lee Webb. He does not have a picture in the class photos—although his sister Lura appears in the Sophomore section—but he does show up in the sports sections under football and baseball. I’ll include a couple of pictures from that book. Also, Guinn sent a wonderful photo of the Olney HS football team, in which Roy Lee appears very prominently; he’s taller than everyone else on the team. Apparently it was a common practice for boys who were about to graduate to fail in one class, so they could play football the next fall.

Lura Webb, 1926

Lura and Roy Lee were in high school at the same time, as she related in a letter:

"Roy and I were in high school at the same time. I was a freshman when he was a junior. He was on the football team and I was really proud of him. He kept an eye out on me. If he saw me riding around town with a boy (especially if we drove out of town) he always knew it and and told me so but never told on me. Papa was very strict (do as I say not as I do) and I don’t think Jewell was in a car with a boy until after she came back from her first year in college. I started a little younger and he found out one of the times. I wouldn’t tell him the name of the boy but Roy learned it with his football coach who called the boy in and told him if he ever even looked at me, Old Man Webb was going to kill him. Needless to say, I could pass him in the hall after that and he never looked my way again."

I recently made contact with Mr. Dorman Holub, of the Young County [Texas] Historical Commission, and he has been a wealth of information about Olney and Young County. With his kind permission, the following short history of Olney High School sports is reprinted from his personal research files: “The first football game played by an Olney team was Fall of 1924 against Seymour. They traveled to Seymour and lost the game. Their mascot was the Olney Hillbillies. They did not play another game that year. The Olney Hillbillies played 9 games in 1925 and ended up 4-4-1. [A] new high school was built in 1926 and bleachers were moved from the Olney baseball park to the football field. 1928 is when the Olney mascot became the Cubs which is the mascot still today. 1928-1932, Olney won five consecutive district championships and three regional crowns. It was a "B" school. In those days, you could win a Regional Crown and decide if you wanted to go into the "A" school playoffs. Most didn't. There were 8 Regional Crown teams in the State. 1928, Cubs were undefeated in district and lost to Mineral Wells in Bi-district.”

By the end of the 1920s, though, Roy Lee was getting ready to move on, get a job, get married, get on with life; but that's a subject for another post.

[and I should add that I'm fully aware that "Dago" is a derogatory term and an ethnic slur; but there it is in the yearbook. I have no idea why he was given that nickname, only that nicknames were much more common then than they are now. -RW]

Lolar May Webb

UPDATED 7/19/08 9:30PM MDT!

In response to a list of Webbs in the Perrin, Texas, cemetery, sent to me by Young County Historical Commission chair Dorman Holub (and a hat tip to Dorman! Thanks again!) I checked them against the Webb file at home and found several of them were relatives. Among them were Charlie O. Webb, who was Grandpa Webb's uncle; Charlie's wife Ada; Emlie, who was Grandpa Webb's mother; and W.R., or Wesley Rosele Webb, who was his father. Looking further through the files that Becci compiled, I found a little biography of W.R. Webb, written by Aunt Zella:


"Wesley Rosele Webb, son of James and Elizabeth Webb, was born May 10, 1850, in Clay County, Alabama. In 1868 he married Emily [sic] Delilah Jordan. ... By 1870 Wesley and Emily had moved with other members of the Webb family to Tippah County, Mississippi, where the next two children were born. By 1875 they were in Wood County, Texas, where the other children were born. They moved for a few years in the early 1890s to Independence County, Arkansas, but by 1905 they were back in Texas and settled in the Lone Star community near Poolville, Parker County. Wesley Rosele Webb died there in 1905. After her husband's death, Emily and her children moved to the Oakdale community east of Perrin, in Jack County, where she lived until her death in 1923. The children of W.R. and Emily were: Sarah Rosa Lee Webb, born 1869; Jim Christopher Webb, born 1871, Lydia Ann Webb, born 1884, Charles Oscar Webb, born 1886, Lola[r] Mae Webb, born 1888, Melton Webb, born 1890, lived two months." I edited this down a bit, as it also mentioned whom they married and so on, as well as the dates.

UPDATE!

Here's some further detail on Wesley R. Webb and other early Webbs, from Randall:

"I was looking at Wesley Roselle Webb and his family and have found that in 1900 census they listed Uncle Sally as Rausal Webb, son, 6 years old, single. Of course they also listed Zella as "Zeley A" Webb so you see the problem in determining actual names from some of these records.

"I also found Wesley Webb at age 6/12 yrs (6 months) in the 1850 Census for Shelby County, Alabama taken on 20 Sep 1850 with his parents, Jordan (57) and Susan (36) and eight children (Wesley # 8)

Also, in the 1900 census for Parker County, TX the entries for W R Webb puts him at 50 married for 32 years and Emily Delilah (Sp?) 52 married for 32 years. In that same list there were six of the children listed as Webbs plus a Rosa Brock (Bieck?) listed as a daughter born in Jun 1869 30 years old and widowed and her son Grady listed as grand-son born May 1893 living in the same household. Guinn or Jimmy Ruth do either of you remember Roy Lee talking about an Aunt Rosa or an older cousin Grady? Oh yes, in at least 2 lists I've found Lola Webb, no Lolar so far."

As Randall said earlier, this is sorta like quicksand; you struggle to understand and just end up getting sucked in deeper. Oh well! There is a Brock connection but I'm having a hard time with it. Let me meander at the keyboard and maybe we can figure it out. Wesley and Emlie (for so it's spelled on her tombstone, although that could be a stonecutter's error; but it does show up sort of like that somewhere else) had eleven children, one of which, of course, was James Christopher Webb. The first, however, was Sarah Rosa Lee Webb, born in 1869, who married William Harrison Brock. Here's what it says about them in the Jack County history, also quoted above:

"William Harrison Brock and Sarah Rosa Lee Webb were married in Independence County, Arkansas, on September 4, 1892. Later that same year, Will and Rosie left Arkansas with some of Rosie's family and other Webb relatives who were moving to Texas. The long trip was hard on Rosie, who was already expecting their first child, so the young couple stopped in Bowie County, Texas, to spend the winter there with Brock relatives. Their son, William Grady Brock, was born there on May 30, 1893. They soon continued on their move and joined the rest of the Webb family where they had settled near Peaster in Parker County. They later moved to the Oakdale community (east of present-day Perrin) in Jack County."

So let's see, that would make Sarah, or Rosie as she seems to have been called, Roy Lee's aunt on his father's side. That would make William Grady Brock his cousin, right? What relation we would be to him makes my eyes glaze over. I never was good with advanced math.

So now since we're struggling in the quicksand let's sink a bit further, and go back all the way to Roy Lee's great-grandparents, once again courtesy of the Jack County history:

"WEBB, JAMES AND ELIZABETH

Many descendants of James and Elizabeth Webb still live in Jack County, especially in the Perrin area. James Webb was born in 1810 in Georgia. Elizabeth was born in 1812, also in Georgia. Their first child was born in Georgia in 1835. By 1839 they had moved to Clay County, Alabama. After the Civil War the family moved to Tippah County, Mississippi, where both James and Elizabeth died [both in 1905 -RW] Afterwards most of their children came to Texas, some to Wood County in East Texas, some to the Poolville area of Parker County, and some to the Perrin area of Jack County. The children of James and Elizabeth Webb were 1. James Webb, born in 1835 in Georgia, married Sarah?. 2. Julie Webb, married first ? Jones and second John J. Hill. Her first husband was killed in the Civil War. She lived with her second husband near Poolville, Parker County, Texas. Her son, Young Jones, lived near Perrin. 3. Willie Webb, married ?Hays, lived in Wood County. 4. Thomas Webb, born in 1839 in Alabama, married Louise McGee. 6. Emily Webb, born in 1846 in Alabama, married John A. Calloway, lived in Wood County. Their son, John William Calloway, came to Jack County. 7. Jackson Webb, born 1845 in Alabama, married ? Galloway, lived in Arkansas. 8. Seaborn Webb, born in 1849 in Alabama, lived in Wood County. 9. Wesley Rosele Webb, born in 1850 in Alabama, married Emlie [sic] Delilah Jordan, lived in Parker County. 10. Elizabeth Webb, born in 1852 in Alabama, married William G. Mask, lived in Jack County. 11. John Webb, born in 1854 in Alabama, married first, Paulina Stewart and second, Caroline Cantwell, lived in Parker County. Sons, James Wesley Webb and Andrew Jefferson Webb, and daughter, Willie (Webb) Hamilton, lived in Perrin. 12. Milton Webb, born in 1854 in Alabama, married Exer C. Seaberry, lived in Clay or Montague County. 13. Susan Webb, born about 1856 in Alabama, lived in Wood County. 14. Mary (Molly) Webb, born abou 1858 in Alabama, married Andy Morris, lived near Poolville in Parker County."

Whew! That's a lot of kids! Two things stand out: first, they were pumping them out about every 10 months or so, and second, it's amazing that they all seemed to have lived to adulthood. I guess we're just from good stock.

One that struck me as interesting was Lolar, whose tombstone is the one that was broken in half, as shown in this photo:




The short biography of W.R. Webb said that she had never married, and the dates (1889-1919) indicate that she died young (although 30 was not so young in those days, I know. ) No real reason for the interest in Lolar, just curious about a relative I never knew I had.

In a later comment, Jimmy says that Roy Lee said that he had an aunt that died from eating left-over salad. In those days of little or no refrigeration, I could see how something like a potato salad or a may0-based dressing could go bad and give someone food poisoning, and if it was a severe enough case it can certainly lead to dehydration and death. Jimmy further says she always thought that Lolar was that aunt. About her name: in some of the records I've seen, it's listed as Lola, but unless someone really goofed in chiseling her name on her tombstone, I'd have to conclude that it's Lolar. At any rate, it's an interesting name.

Rosele or Roswell?

UPDATED A COUPLE OF TIMES, BELOW!

Guinn sent a scan of a letter written, I'm assuming, by Uncle Sally (or is it Sallie; I've seen it that way in Lura's letters, for example]. Here's the text:

National War Work Council of

Young Men’s Christian Associations

Of the United States

“with the colors”

Oct. 26^th 1917

Dear father, I received your letter this afternoon but I have not got the [?] yet. Will be apt to get it tomorrow it generally takes about a day longer for a package.

I received that candy and gum you spoke about with those cakes I got some time ago. I got my razor last week. Say those Endless [?] blades would not shave in it but there was a boy in here who sent home for some Endless blades and his folks sent him Keen Cutters [?] so we traded that made it come out just right. I am still well never felt better in my life.

As ever your son Roswell.

END

Well, that throws confusion over the matter. In the family bible pages that came from Aunt Lura, that I was looking at in the Webb file, with the list of Roy Lee's siblings the name is spelled "Rousal" and there is a notation that says "I suspect that Papa didn't know how to spell Roswell so I don't know which is on his birth certificate--was always called Sallie." So there's a contradiction: he signed a letter as "Roswell" and the family bible seems to indicate that, on the one hand; on the other, the name is spelled phonetically in the family bible as "Rousal" which sounds pretty close to "Rosele" which was his grandfather's middle name. I wonder if he got tired of having to spell "Rosele" and explain it and just went for "Roswell" which is easy enough.

UPDATE: in a later comment, Randall says that he has Uncle Sallie's enlistment papers in which he spells it "Roswell." To me that still doesn't change what I thought above: his grandfather's middle name, from records, was definitely "Rosele." It's likely that he was given that name in honor of his grandfather. However, it's kind of an odd name and especially so for a young man, so he probably changed it to Roswell to avoid having to explain and/or spell it all the time. In a comment to an earlier post, Jimmy says: "Daddy always pronounced it to sound like 'Rosell' [Roz ull]."

Makes sense to me.

Here's an update from a comment from Jimmy regarding Sallie's service in WW I:

"Uncle Sally enlisted in one branch and got discharged because he had mono (I think that's what he had). He then enlisted in the other branch and went overseas. There are pictures of him in both uniforms."

UPDATE: As promised, here are the two photos of Uncle Sallie; thanks Guinn! I don't know anything more about his service, unfortunately.

watermelon

UPDATED!

We got a watermelon yesterday and as we were enjoying it, I was thinking of when we used to go visit Aunt Ruby in Breckenridge. She would always go to a cabinet or pantry and pull out a big jar of watermelon hearts, sometimes yellow, sometimes red, and just turn us loose with it; I remember just about foundering on watermelon. That was such a nice thing to do as I'm sure we made a mess. Actually I can't even remember who "we" was, only that it wasn't just me. Jimmy? I remember visiting Ruby a few times but the one that really stands out was when we went there for Uncle Ben's funeral. I must have been in junior high, because the Monkees were popular right then; and we (again, who? I just remember another boy about my age and a girl; Uncle Jimmy's kids, whose names escape me just now?) didn't go to the funeral as it turned out, for reasons I don't know, and instead spent the afternoon singing along to some Monkees 45rpm over and over and playing air guitar, using an ironing board for a keyboard. For a funeral, it was actually a lot of fun. I always heard or imagined that Ben Flynn (right?) had been gassed in World War I, which was why he was always sort of sickly. Was that true? The other person who really stands out in memory of visits to Aunt Ruby's was of course Joel Jack; we were all afraid of him, with no reason to be save that he was different, being disabled. I never had a chance to know him as some of you did. Was it Breckenridge that had the red brick streets? On the recent drive up and down US Hwy 287, one town we went through, Clarendon, Texas, had red brick streets and it was really a flashback to whereever that was.

From the comments:

"Actually, she turned you loose w/a big jar of heart melon from a yellow melon and you got up under the kitchen table so you wouldn't have to share. I always thought it poetic justice that you got a tack in your knee when you were crawling out." [none of which I remember, save for the juicy goodness of the watermelon; the rest is pure calumny -RW]

"Jimmie's [Carroll, our mother's youngest brother; the only one who is still living] kids are Randy Joe and Linda Kay. Randy is older than Rodger (again, I think) and Linda is just younger than [Roy Dale]. Ben J's boys were at Uncle Ben's funeral as well and Larry is about the same age as you.

"Breckenridge has brick streets. Daddy said that one of the bricklayers was a black man who could lay brick twice as fast as anyone else working there. Uncle Ben was gasssed in WWI and lost a lung or part of one. Joel Jack was something else. He adored Daddy. I have some good (and some scarey) memories of him."

Joel Jack, for anyone who doesn't remember, was a cousin--Aunt Ruby and Uncle Ben's son--and he was disabled. He used a wheelchair and could get around on his own, and once you got used to the way he talked you could understand him. For a small child he was kind of scary because he was pretty big for all that, and his hands were very strong. But he was very kind-hearted and as Jimmy noted above, he adored Roy Lee. Knowing what we now know about the long-term effects of toxins, I always wondered if his disability was a birth defect caused by Uncle Ben being gassed in the trenches in WW I. I don't know if Joel was born that way or if it was caused by some later trauma; I seem to remember something about him being injured in a fire, but I'm sure I'll get set straight on that!

Just a note for commenters; please include dates and full names! I looked up the Monkees song "Last Train to Clarksville," which I seem to remember we played on our ironing board and washtub drums, and it came out in 1966. And I don't know who "Ben J" was, I'm sorry to admit.

UPDATE:

This from Randall: Ben J. (Ben Junior) was the eldest Flynn Child, of Ruby and Ben Flynn. Ruby was Ruth Mae's sister.

"I never kept track of cousins..."

(UPDATED!)


Indeed, I couldn't begin to count the number of cousins we must have. The quote is from a letter to Guinn from Aunt Lura. I'm going to do the same on this blog; I'll keep it to our immediate family, because if we tried to round up all of those cousins, even just on the Webb side, not to mention the Carrolls, it would drive me to distraction. Maybe when I'm retired and have nothing better to do, but for now, a list of Roy Lee's siblings will suffice. This came from a family bible that Lura had, I think; it was in the files that Becci compiled a few years ago. I can't even begin to do even this for the Carrolls; anyone else?

UPDATED WITH CORRECT DATES 7/17/08 2:00PM MDT (thanks to Randall and Guinn!)

Anyway, here is the list:

Benjamin Rosele b. Cleburne Co, Arkansas, July 11, 1893, died July 6, 1962, in Stamford, Texas
Zella Ann Webb, b. Rusk C., Texas, Feb. 28, 1895, died Dec. 11, 1950
Lillian Delilah Webb, b. Cleburne Co, Arkansas, Dec. 24, 1897, died March 1980
Lizzie Gertrude Webb b. Jack Co. Texas, July 7, 1901, died Jan. 16, 1902
Dovie Belle Webb, b. Jack Co. Texas Ded.C 14 1903, died Dec. 21, 1970
Jewell Gladys Webb b. Parker Co. Texas Aug. 13 1906, died 1986
Roy Lee [my father] born Jack Co. Texas Nov. 26 1908, died April 16, 1970, Farmington, New Mexico.
Lura Audine Webb b. Jack Co. Texas Feb. 13 1912, died Sept. 26, 2004 in Downey, California
Randall Sylvester Webb b. Jack Co. Texas, October 24, 1914, died Nov. 27, 1981

Something of interest to me--and this might be something you all knew, but it was news to me--is Uncle Sally's middle name, which I've always assumed was "Roswell" or something. But since his father's name, our great grandfather, was Wesley Rosele Webb, I think it's pretty safe to assume that he was named for him. Since I was such a latecomer to the family, I only knew a few of these people.

I remember Uncle Sallie (which spelling I'll adhere to hereafter, since it was what Aunt Lura, his sister used) pretty well, we often visited him in Stamford, Texas. He had married a woman named Gladys, and they lived in a big (I thought 3-story, but was recently told it was only two) house on a tree-lined street. There was a big sweeping entrance, it seems like it was red brick going into the house. I remember the big dining room with a chandelier, and their cook who would produce the most fabulous rolls and pecan pies. The upstairs was a long line of bedrooms; a dozen? I can't remember the number, only that in one of them was a stuffed dog, a little black and white bulldog, and it was really spooky. Then outside in the back yard were rows of pecan trees, from which we would get a big package every year of pecans. Recently I had occasion to buy some pecans from a roadside stand along US Hwy 287, and the method of cracking them--put two in your hand and squeeze--and the taste brought back a flood of memories. I also remember going to a ranch or stables outside Stamford where we would ride horses, talk about horses, groom horses, for hours. Sallie had one horse that I remember well, Rusty, who was a champion cutting horse, a beautiful gold palomino who could turn on the proverbial dime and give change. But I promised myself I would save my horsey stories for a separate post.

The only others of my father's siblings that I remember are Jewell, Randall, and Lura. Jewell lived in Arizona, and we would sometimes go visit her and her husband--Barney?--there. I think it was in Bullhead City. Other than that I don't remember much about her, save that she was very nice and full of laughter. Randall the same; I remember visiting him a few times, or seeing him at funerals. (I must have gone to Sallie's funeral but I really don't remember anything about it). The most notable memory I have of Randall and Alena, I think it was, his wife, was after my own father had died and I was hitchhiking around northern and central California. We were living like hippies in campgrounds around Truckee and for some reason long forgotten, I decided I would go visit my Uncle Randall. Probably just to get a bath and a square meal, as we were living on granola, something I cannot eat to this day. So I called him from a pay phone, on a collect call, and when he heard that the call was from Roy Webb, I could hear him say "Roy Webb's been dead for a year!" and I had to identify myself as Jug, which worked. So I hitchhiked from Truckee all the way to Sacramento and they were very gracious and nice. Finally, Lura, who was the last of the siblings; she lived for many years in Downey, California, and we visited with her there. She also wrote letters to Guinn and sat for interviews with Randall (the younger), so she's about the only one from whom we got any written or oral family history.

The rest of them are to me, sadly, just names or an occasional photo. I might have visited with some of them but I was just a baby and too young to remember.

A nice long comment from Jimmy regarding this post:

"Aunt Glad's house had 4 bedrooms upstairs [but it seemed so much bigger to me; like there must have been at least a dozen bedrooms! -RW] and a big walk-in closet wherein 'lived' the stuffed dog. He freaked me out everytime I saw him. The back yard had pecan trees along the fence on 2 sides. There was a shed and horse pen in the back, left corner. Rusty was a double-registered palamino quarter horse and was a show/parade horse. Pat was the cutting horse--he was a buckskin. Uncle Larry was Aunt Jewell's husband. We met him for the 1st time in 1954; I don't think they were married yet. Aunt Elena was a lovely lady who called herself a Spanish-Mexican. Her parents were from Spain and she was born in Mexico. Her first husband was a policeman in Hermasillo (??) and was killed there."

So there you have it, from the--I won't say horse's mouth--authoritative source. Like I said, horsey posts are coming; I have so many memories of "mornings on horseback," to borrow a phrase, that it could take forever. And I know Jimmy has as many or more. I'll get her to send me some of them and we'll do a whole thing on horses. I have a photo of Roy Lee on Nugget, Jimmy's first horse, and some of him with his carriage and mules.

Roy and Ruth

Yet more photos, these of Roy and Ruth and various others. This about exhausts my store of photos that aren't me as a little baby, a smirking pre-teen, or a gawky teenager, so if we want any more photos, you will all have to send them!

James C. and Susan Alice Webb

UPDATED!!

Since I started this I've gotten several other photos of James Christopher Webb and his wife, Susan Alice Bowermaster Webb. So I'm going back to this earlier post and add them, and also add a bit more about them than I had before. First, their vital statistics: James Christopher Webb, son of Wesley Rosele Webb, was born in Alcorn County, Mississippi, on March 12, 1871. The family moved around a bit, as was common at the time, and J.C. (as we'll call him) was one of two children born in Mississippi. By 1905, the family had settled in Wood County, Texas, where they stayed. W.R. died that same year. Susan Alice Bowermaster was born in Jefferson County, Illinois, May 2, 1875 [the notes from Aunt Lura, which she got from a family bible, say 1874]. According to the same family bible, they were married in Tina, Arkansas [which apparently no longer exists] on September 11, 1892. They had nine children, listed in a post above titled "I never kept track of cousins." By some accounts, even though the union produced nine children, it was a rather stormy relationship. J.C. Webb was a big man, with, apparently, big appetites. Susan Alice Webb, though tiny--she looks to be barely five feet tall, if that--was apparently a very strong willed woman. Also above is the business card for the Webb Hotel, and I've been looking for photos of it; if I find any I'll post them. As far as anyone knows, he kept the hotel all through the 1920s, but then lost it in the Great Depression. Dorman Holub of the Young County Historical Commission told me that the Depression didn't hit Olney as hard as some places, but it must have been bad enough for him to lose the hotel. Lura said in a letter written some years later that her father was a failure as a farmer, and that they would have starved if Susan Webb hadn't "worked her fingers to the bone in a hotel" to support them. She also remembered that they moved to Olney when she was in the third grade, and she was born in 1912, so that would make it around 1920. No other records of the hotel are presently known, although I've been asking the Young County Historical Commission and the Olney Enterprise, the local newspaper. If anything comes up I'll post it here.

Only one incident at the hotel survived, in a newspaper article written on November 22, 1929. That day a local constable, Ed Langford, was shot and killed suddenly by a man named Reese. [According to Dorman Holub again, Olney at this time was in the throes of a wild oil boom, and there were dozens of saloons, with gunfights in the streets]. The article continued: "Confusion ran riot in the streets following the report of the killing. ... A Smith & Wesson special automatic .38 caliber pistol and 17 shells were turned over to officers by J.C. Webb, proprietor of the Webb Motel [sic], who told officers that Reese, shortly after 4 o'clock had entered the hotel and given Webb the weapon and ammunition. According to officers Webb is quoted as having said that Reese made this remark 'Here, I want you to keep this gun for me; I have just killed a man down there.' "

J.C. Webb was not the most pleasant of fathers, and he was particularly mean to our father, Roy Lee. I've heard it said that he was what we would today call abusive to Roy Lee; then it was just being strict, "spare the rod and spoil the child," but these "whippings" lasted until Roy Lee was big enough to take the rod away from him and warn him not to do it again. J.C. also was not very faithful to his wife, and there is the impression of several separations, until a final split in the 1930s, when Susan Alice Bowermaster Webb moved to southern California, where she stayed the rest of her life. She died in Bell Garden, California, in May, 1950, while J.C. had preceded her by one year, dying in Olney in August 1949.

OK, a couple more photos, recently received. These are of J.C. and Susan when they were much older. I'm not sure who the young child is with J.C. in the photo on the left; it was probably taken in Olney. In the one on the right, taken in California, the woman standing behind the wheelchair on the left is Jewell, while the one on the right is Lillian, both her daughters and thus my father's sisters and my aunts.

UPDATE:

Just recently received this photo from Randall of Benjamin Strickland Bowermaster (1840-1897) and Ann Marie Fairchild Bowermaster (1840-1885). These would be the parents of my grandmother (on my father's side) Susan Alice Bowermaster Webb. Don't really have much more on them than birth and death dates but I'll see what I can find and post it here.