My mother was the only girl in a family with four boys, and, in her own words, was spoiled rotten by her dad. Given this, she may have gone through her early life without any reason to hold a grudge; after all she got her own way with her daddy’s support. If her dad had not died when when she was 12, she may have waltzed her way to adulthood without opposition.
When her daddy died in 1929, he told his wife that times were going to get hard and that she needed to take the kids and move back to Humble, Tx, a small town 20 miles east of Houston. The depression hit right after he died so my grandmother sold her husband’s half of the trucking business to his brother and used the money to buy a two-story rooming house right on Main Street.
Times had been good for the family before my grandfather died. The family had lived in a good part of Houston in a nice house filled with top of the line furniture. One of my grandmother’s favorite pieces was her Duncan Phyfe dining room table with matching side board. This table design featured a large center leg strong enough to support a top that could seat twelve. They couldn’t bring everything with them when they moved, but the Duncan Phyfe dining room set came with them and was placed with pride in the center of the family’s downstairs dining room.
The earlier oil boom was still alive, and the demand for strong men to work on the many rigs brought large numbers of unmarried workers to Humble. Her hopes that the rooming house would realize enough money to support her family of six came close, but five children proved too much for her to feed and clothe so she made a hard choice. She contacted the Masonic Home, an orphanage for the children of Masons located in upper Central Texas and arranged to place the three youngest boys there. Mother always said that her mother would have placed all of them in the Home but there was an age cut off. Anyone over twelve was not acceptable so Mother and her older brother, Arkie, stayed in Humble; the three younger boys were sent off to Waco.
Mother says losing her daddy, moving away from her Houston friends, and having to change schools was terrible, but nothing, nothing compared to the fact that she was forced to move from a nice house with an indoor toilet to a house with an outdoor toilet. She said it was humiliating having to go outside, rain or shine, walk down a path, where everybody in the neighborhood could see her and know where she was going. It wasn’t the first time she had to use an outdoor facility, but the last time it happened, she was under six years old. Now, she was a teenager and the embarrassment was traumatizing.
Mother said that her brother jumped on her case as soon as he found out she had trouble with using an outhouse. He could be both ruthless and relentless, and for this, he expended his best effort.. He took every opportunity to make things worse. He announced her trip down the path in a loud voice; he talked at school about how she tried to sneak out; he pretended that he could see what she was doing; he would sneak up and try to scare her. She said he could get away with murder, and that her mother never believed her when she complained about his teasing.
Mother was a bit over twelve; her brother was almost fifteen. Their mother was trying to run a rooming house with eight bedrooms upstairs with one woman hired to help with the laundry. Mother and her brother were considered plenty old enough to do their equal share of chores. Before the loss of good income that ended with her daddy’s death, Mother may have had some small responsibilities. But, doing chores in a rooming house and putting away a few personal items in her bedroom were not even close to being comparable. Mother grudgingly accepted the fact that, given her age and the hard times, she was going to have to bite the bullet and help out. However, she said, she had trouble with doing chores when her mother told her to do them along with the fact that she had to do chores everyday.
One especially obnoxious chore was shared by both kids. Since the house had no indoor toilets, the men in the rooming house used chamber pots or slop jars at night. Somebody had to empty these each morning and Mother clearly recalls the bitter fights she had with her brother over whose turn it was to handle that chore.
One day, when it was Mother’s time to empty the slop jars, she tried to get away with a short cut. She decided to empty the slop jars off the upstairs balcony. Her brother caught her red handed. She had been warned about trying this.. She had been threatened with a dreaded leg whipping with a willow switch. Worse still was the fact that Arkie usually got to fetch the switch. She would never thrown he first slop bucket if she’d thought there was any chance of getting caught. When her brother let her know what he’d seen, she tried bribery. She tried threats. Finally, she got him to promise to keep it a secret and hoped beyond hope that he would either forget about the whole thing or keep to his word. He remembered. And he told.
The next day was a Saturday and Mother always met with her best girlfriends for an afternoon of playing with dolls and talking about boys. She was on her way out the door, but before the screen door hit the frame, her mother’s rang out. “ Young lady,” she said, “you can stop right there. You’re not going anywhere until you finish your chores. It’s your time to take care of those slop jars. And, don’t even think of throwing them over the balcony. Go ahead; change your clothes. Let me know when you’re through. Then I’ll decide whether you get to go or not.”
Mother was furious. Her brother told on her. Her friends wouldn’t wait on her. She would be emptying slop jars while they were having fun. It was not fair.. What difference did it make if she emptied those slop jars now or later. She felt just how unfair her life was clear down to the center of her very being. Mother says she didn’t have a conscious thought about getting even and has no memory of what drove her to do what she did. She went directly to where odd tools were stored and got out a sharp, cross cut saw. These saws were the mainstay of a carpenter’s construction tools. It had a wooden handle attached to a wide tough piece of steel with sharp saw teeth down one side. This saw could cut a 2X4 piece of lumber into the right size for framing. Mother’s hand fit the handle just fine.
She took the saw and marched straight into the dining room where, her mother’s most important possession, the Duncan Phyfe table, with its great big center leg sat waiting. She crawled under the table, got situated and began sawing. She was two inches into the leg when one of the roomers heard a strange noise and looked under the table.
It was such a shock to my grandmother that punishment faded from her mind. The idea that her daughter, age 12, would do such a thing stumped her. She did put her foot down. My mother was not allowed out of the house for the rest of the weekend. Just in case my mother had other ideas, her older brother, and tattletale of note, was put in charge of keeping an eye on her. That was the last time mother took out her anger on the furniture. She developed other means of getting even with anyone that stood in her way and her brother was suitably warned.