Small Towns

My new blog for Uncle Will

I have created a new blog for my Great Uncle Willie I. Tubb and his World War I experiences. You can visit this blog by going to: http://myunclewillieand worldwaridiary.blogspot.com

My great Uncle's experiences and postcards from WWI

My Uncle Will is one of my family heroes. He was not only a kind man but a man who knew war and how terrible war can be. He became a rich man after the war by investing in land which eventually became rich in oil. I am honored to share these photos and his experiences on this blog. I hope this will be entertaining as well as educational. If nothing else, I believe that the next generation will benefit from knowing that war is hell and should be avoided. My Great Uncle Willie I. Tubb knew this and that is why he kept a diary of his experiences as well as giving me many memories of his talks at my families supper table. Some of the time, he broke down and wept and other times he laughed telling of his experiences. It was very hard on my Uncle and that is why he came over to talk of his war years. He had to talk and get his memories of the war away from him even though there was some good times also. He was gassed and shot at and shot back while he was on the machine gun crew. He was also used as a messenger. He ran terrified behind German lines just to deliver a message or to retrieve water for his comrades. I will talk more about him in the future.

Aunt Cass

My Aunt Cass on my Father's side of the family lived in a half dugout by the Colorado River. The dugout was called a half dugout because a wooden house stood over an earthen hole in the ground. You entered the dugout from the house by a stairway. I remember visiting her and the earth smell of the dugout as you walked down the stairway. There were newspapers lining the wall that was plastered there. Most of the newspapers were rather old. Most people back then lined their walls with newspapers. Up above in the dugout, were just wooden, bare rafters. She kept an old Victrola phonograph down in there and her wood stove for heating. I kept some of her old records after her death. This is also where I found her magazines that I have on this blog. She had some old love letters that I also found in the rafters along with some old valentines.
My Aunt Cass had a hard life. After some miscarriages,she had a beautiful little daughter that I had heard was retarded. The little girl also had epilepsy and didn't live very long. I believe she was nine or ten when she died. Aunt Cass was married and divorced after the birth of her second child. Her second child was a boy named Richard. He was drafted in WWII into Patton's Third Army. Immediately after leaving basic training they put him on board ship where he was in the invasion of Sicily. He was killed in the first wave and his body was never recovered. I recently found where his name is listed in the graveyard there.
Aunt Cass never got over his death and always thought he would return. She would have dreams in which she would see him in a cafe or someplace and have relatives drive her to the place she had seen him. She would then become distraught when she found that he was not there. She married again after her son's death but her husband soon died and left her all alone. As time went on, she stayed a recluse and slowly lost her mind. She was then sent to a nursing home and was mistreated there and eventually passed on. When I think of my Great Aunt Cass, I realize that she did live a hard life and I often wonder why God took away the one thing that she had wanted. Her children.

Jimmy Rodgers

When I listen to Jimmy Rodgers or Bob Wills And The Texas Playboys, I always think of my Dad and the 1962 Chevrolet pickup that we rode together in. Dad would go to the Colorado River to hand fish and while he was driving he would sing those old songs to me and my brothers. I was in heaven back then. My Dad was my buddy and the person I looked up to. He always could make you laugh. There was always fun times to be had when I was around my Dad. When his brothers Dalton, Gerald, and Son (Francis) were around it was the most fun any person who was male could ever have. Hand fishing is what the the folks in Oklahoma call noodling. When all of Dad's brothers headed for the river it was an all day affair. There were no swim trunks and the wives were not invited. Everyone stripped off their clothes and went in. They always headed for the place with the most rocks because that is where the large yellow cats and blue cats were. I am talking cat fish here, you get me? Dad and his brothers would go under the water and stick their hands up under the large rocks and pull out some large catfish. Afterwards, we would go home and have a large fish fry if the fishing was good.
Of course, hand fishing was dangerous but we would have loads of fun. I know twice it did turn dangerous. Once when my brother got his arm caught under a rock and was not coming up. My uncle and my Dad had to go under the water and pull his arm out where it was stuck up to the elbow. Another time was when my uncle Son went under and grabbed a water moccasin with his hand instead of a fish.

Nostalgic view of the past through reading material

I hope you enjoy looking at some of the many (in fact too many)magazines I have collected through the years. I have a habit of picking up old reading material because I am interested in the people who lived before me. I am interested in knowing what the lives of my ancestors were like. Sometimes it is unreal to me that some one came before me years past and I have no knowledge of their lives. That is the reason I have some of my great aunt's old letters and magazines and my grand parent's newspapers and letters. I have even kept my own old magazines and comic books.
Some time in my great aunt's life she sat in her half dugout in West Texas and read by a warm mesquite fire the same magazines that I read today. My great aunt's life was a world of sorrow. I will tell you more about her as I go on with this blog. I haven't got time now. I have my one and half year old grandson in my lap while I am writing this and he needs tending. My grandkids are the next generation. Each new generation should be loved and pampered and taught that a family is the greatest and most precious thing a person can have. As I write about this I am thinking of my Great Aunt alone in her dugout reading her magazines and in sorrow. May God bless her spirit in heaven.

Photos of towns that have died

There is always a look of sadness about ghost towns. Wind whips around every corner carrying bits of trash and tumbleweeds. Old doors hang on their hinges and the wind creaks loose boards. You can almost hear the long lost occupant's voices. I still have memories of the days I spent living my boyhood in one particular ghost town. When I die and all the others die that have lived their lives there, what will be left?
I know an occasional visitor will come by and look at the bare, weather beaten boards and the bits of history laying in the dirt and say "I wish these old boards could speak." Another century passes and the town where I lived will go back to the wilderness. I believe that it is only right that it does. After all, when the town came into being,it didn't want us there or need us. When I go back to my little ghost town where I grew up,I am made aware that the wilderness is taking it back. It was an oil camp. The land was raped. Oil was taken from the ground like it's life blood. It was polluted with chemicals and torn by pipelines. Whole species died or left. Now they are slowly coming back. There is no drinking water there. Sometimes I am thankful for that because no one will move back with out water.I still have my memories of the small town that I grew up in. That is all I need.