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.

Thoughts About The Texas of My Childhood

I was a shy country boy. I grew up for five years with my older brother before the next boy came along. Five more years developed and my youngest brother was born. We were all boys, no sisters. My oldest brother and I had the run of the country side before the others came along. We lived in a land filled with stunted mesquite trees in a valley filled with mesas and peaks. Around September or October, the first blue norther would blow in. I don't see too many good blue northers anymore. But a true blue norther is when you look on the horizon in West Texas and see blue black clouds. This is usually in the morning. Every thing is still and the air is warm. As the day progresses, you will start to notice a brown line underneath the blue black clouds.
Before long a strong wind hits, bringing the temperature down from ninety five degrees to forty degrees in a matter of minutes. Texas skies are beautiful to watch. Violent storms with tremendous lightening to soft breezes in the springtime.
There are no algarita bushes or catclaw where I live now. Only wide open plains and lots of beautiful blue skies. I used to love to smell the fragrance of the algarita bushes flowering in the springtime. It is cooler up here on the plains where I live now. The snows in the winter reach to a foot of snow and sometimes more. There is nothing but farm land.
My Texas of my childhood was full of adventures. We would rabbit hunt in the spring and summer. Deer and turkey hunt in the winter and often trap winter furs. I loved my child hood in the country but was isolated from the outside world. I remained very shy until I decided that I had to join the world. What a bummer!

Church and Kids

I remember my momma dragging me off to church every Sunday. My great grandfather was a Baptist circuit rider, so naturally we went to the Baptist church. I remember the church as if it was yesterday. We had what we called "Specials" where the women would try their hand at caterwauling or singing. To me it was almost always caterwauling. We had one large boned woman that would climb up to the pulpit every Sunday and sing "How Great Thou Art". I hated it but at the same time her bright red lipstick hypnotized me. There would be a red oval, a screech, and oblong oval, then a screech and her large bosoms would lift and she would let out another screech strong enough to pull the suspenders off of a two hundred pound man. Mom always squirmed during this torment but tried to look interested. I would occasionally become bored and do the unthinkable. I would mock the preacher. Mom hated this. The wooden pews were hard on my skinny rear end and I would squirm. Mom would start out by giving me juicy fruit gum. When that failed, she would give me a pen and paper. After that failed I would began to mock the preacher. I would look up at the pulpit and the preacher would be yelling about those godless communists or something similar and begin waving his hands. I would watch his face and do the motions and wave my hands. Then came the dreaded pinch to the leg. My mother would look siideways through gritted teeth. "Don't you be mockin' the preacher." Of course I would start to cry and then I would be threatened with going outside for a moment. No one wanted to go outside with mom. That was not a thing you wanted to do. When I went to sunday school we usually had a rancher teaching us until things got carried away and the boys started wrestling or "wrastling" as it is called in West Texas. Then the bible lesson ended with the rancher throwing up his hands and letting the riot take place. Of course, he was always going to tell our parents. The girls and boys were separated so their were no girls at our bible lessons. I remember one time an old rancher was speaking about the bible and I had the first run in with a real live booger eater The kid's name was Jerry. He was sitting next to me when he pulled out the biggest long bloody booger I had ever seen in my life. Then he opened his mouth and swallowed it down. Believe me, I was no longer hungry for the Sunday pot roast my momma made when we got home. Jerry had a freckeled face and light brown hair. I could never look at a kid with a frecked face the same way again.
We lived in the oil fields of West Texas and my Dad was a roustabout, truck driver and finally later in life, a welder. He was only off on Sundays so he didn't attend church as much. We had a Lottie Moon offering at the church every Sunday. When I was little I always thought that Miss Lottie must be a very rich lady since she was always asking for money.
A new Baptist preacher came into town one day and was very gung ho on the Baptist religion. He was against women wearing pants and shorts. My mother just thought he was deviant. He was continually asking people for church donations. Dad was almost broke at the time due to not enough oil field work and finally had to be laid off. He became a butcher at the small town grocery store. The new preacher harassed him continually about donations. One day he came by the grocery store and asked again for a donation. Dad had enough. He got in the preacher's face and said "What is more important brother_______, feeding my family or giving to your damned church. I believe it is feeding my family." The preacher blushed turned around and left. Dad came in angry, telling about this and I thought "That away to go. Lottie doesn't need money, she has enough.
We had one black man in town that worked for a rancher. He lived to be over a hundred and was buried in the rancher's family plot beside the rancher and his wife.
People in town called him n______ Paul but not to his face. One day he wanted to attend the Baptist church. The preacher said that he would ask the church deacons.
The deacons said that he could but only if he sat in the back row.
My aunt and my mother attended the church. They were sisters. My mother was mild mannered and my aunt was just the opposite. The first time they went to church and noticed that Paul was sitting in the back row my aunt was livid. She told my mother she was sitting with him. My mother told her not to cause trouble. Afterwards my mother and aunt stopped going to church for quite awhile because of the way Paul was treated. This was before Martin Luther King became famous.

Texas Religion

Here in Texas, people take religion seriously along with their high school football. To disrespect either is to be a sinner and possibly a communist sympathizer. Baptists have a strong influence. Coaches have a strong influence in little towns and if the coach is a Baptist preacher or church deacon then by golly your little man son is gonna get on his knees and praise Jesus. Like I said, we take religion and football seriously here in Texas. At one time, it was almost a hanging offense to disrespect a Texas football team. Now there are too many out of state folks moving in so the folks here just look at you funny when the team is disrespected.

Now,back to religion.The first time I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car that read "when the rapture comes, take my wheel" I thought that the driver was awful self confident and certainly had never hit his or her hand with a hammer or bumped their head accidently. But later on, as I got older, I realized that there was a reason for this. You see, Texas is a large state. You have a hundred miles between towns more or less. That means lots of accidents in the state. I have a theory on that bumper sticker. Lets say Gertrude has just taken her elderly aunt Ethel to the doctor and they have a fender bender. Gertrude is upset that her husband will accuse her of not being a good driver. She suddenly explains to her husband."Oh god Daddy! I wuz drivin' the car and me and aunt Ethel saw this bright light. We thought it wuz the rapture and us bein' christian women, I gave the wheel to Ethel and she says "Oh,lord, I can't take the wheel cause I'm goin' with you." So you see, religous people have to use a lot of excuses and what a better way than put a bumper sticker on your car to cover up.