By Ruth Rucker Lemming
1982, Eakin Publishers

Chapter I

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" -- Alfred Lord Tennyson

With Emphasis on Minnie Lee Holton Weeden Rucker Called Mrs. Minnie Rucker, Minnie, or Mama

            I remember Mama.  Mama sitting placidly in her rocking chair behind the hotel’s registration desk in the office of the National Hotel.  Usually she was quilting, for her hands, like her brain were never idle.  Occasionally she would stand and straighten the only picture on the wall - the picture of her late husband, Henry Rucker, as he took the oath of office as County Clerk of Robertson County. 

            My little chair was close beside Minnie’s, as people who knew her well called her.  I wondered about the man in the picture whom I would have called Papa had he not died so tragically when I was an infant.  I could almost read Mama’s thoughts because she always confided in me.  Just now it seemed, she was hearing her late husband’s friends proffering advice.  “Now Minnie, I knew that Henry would not want his money to be used to buy a hotel.”  Another had said, “You know how the world looks at it:  Only a loose woman would run a hotel.”  But she had been encouraged by Mr. Abe Silverman’s counsel:  “ A voman vould be a goot manager for the hotel vere I make my home.” 

            This particular night it was about 8:30 of an early May evening in 1907, just three years after we had moved to the hotel.  I had been told the story of that move often enough.  There Mama had stood with her little brood of three children and one old man looking at the hotel which was to be her home for thirty-five years.

            Jimmie, just out of her one year of college, gave a look around as she took me, her baby sister, in her arms to relieve Mama.  Robert, my older brother, peered into every nook and corner, seeking the features that would be either work or fun.  Off to one side, the old man, Minnie’s father, Thomas Courtney Holton, standing solitary and subdued, observed also.  He didn’t know whether he actually belonged here, since Henry Rucker’s money was to be used for the first payment.  But his daughter, Minnie, had always been dutiful and kind.  She had “honored her father”, as the Bible taught.  Beside he didn’t have any other place to go; so he surveyed the hotel with interest trying to see what he could do to occupy his time.

            Minnie could see that the walls needed papering; the floors needed covering; the steps needed repairing; the entire place was wearing a dilapidated and desolate air.  Well, she knew who could make things better; and there wasn’t a lazy bone in her body.  The dirt and desolation would soon disappear with a little Bon Ami, fresh clean beds, and window curtains.  Hard work and stick-to-it-iveness would make a great change, and might help her forget her sorrows as well.

            She stood for a moment, silently, in memory of her dear, dead husband and to gather up her courage.  Then Minnie grabbed the well-packed suitcases, the boxes which held clothes and cooking utensils, and the few treasures of pictures, phonograph records, and vases - motioning to the two older children to help carry these treasures.  Then she squared her shoulders, set her jaw, pressed her lips together, pulled her skirt down, held her head high, fixed her eyes forward and marched down the long porch and into the National Hotel office.  The three children followed close behind:  I, Baby Ruth, still in Jimmie’s arms.  Robert continually searching out new things.  The old man brought up the rear, catching something of his daughter’s spirit of determination as she tramped into the lobby of the National Hotel for the first time. 

            Mama rocked contentedly there behind the desk and went on with her story:  “I wonder what those men would say now, Ruthie - just three years later - now that I am the first female member of the Franklin Chamber of Commerce.  Me, just on the shady side of forty.”  She smoothed an unruly lock of hair as a smile played around the corners of her mouth.

            As she talked, Mama’s hands worked avidly on the Oak Leaf and Acorn quilt spread out on the chairs beside her.  “Ruth, you didn’t sleep well last night, did you?  I heard you trying to jabber to your grandfather across the hall.  Now, he’s getting old, baby.  You must let him sleep.”

            “I just wanted to ask him about my brother, Bob,” I answered,  “I miss him so much since he left us to go to Kansas.”

            At the mention of Bob’s name, Mama would either stop quilting or jab her finger with a needle.  “Don’t worry about Bob.  He’ll take care, and he’ll be home before we know it.”

            “But why did he run away?”

            “Some things you aren’t old enough to discuss, Ruthie.  It’s your bed-time now.  Run on, and I’ll come in a few minutes to kiss you goodnight.”

            Determinedly, she pulled her mind back to the quilt in front of her - held rigidly to the pattern by each stuffed acorn, by the tracery of the oak leaves into the symmetry of the whole.

            She loved this time of day - when all of her duties as a small town hotel owner and manager were over, and it was not yet time to go to bed because she hoped for the arrival of some late overnight guests with their touches of outside life and excitement.

            Dimly Minnie heard the muffled hum of the drummer’s voices.  They were sitting at the round black oilcloth covered domino table in front of the bay window, lighted by an electric drop light, covered with a hanging green shade.  Their usual half mocking patter was about Abe Silverman and his little black rule book on dominoes (a rule book for a man who could not read a word).

            Occasionally, one of the men would wander past the two wash basins with the towel rack above them to the water cooler in the corner for a drink from the communal tin cup.  Then she heard one of the drummers declare:  “Well, I’ll bid eight-four.”

            Mr. Silverman rubbed his hands together and ejaculated vociferously, “Gentlemen, you bought a mule.”  I could hear the murmur of their voices, too.  They had almost lulled me to sleep when Mama came to kiss me goodnight. 

            The next morning grandpa took me for our usual morning walk.  We must have made quite a picture touring the long front and back porches.  I, pushing my way in a froglike motion with legs too long for the baby walker; the old man tottered beside with saddened features, brightening only when his gaze focused on me.  I can still remember his face and how he moved about nervously when he asked, “Why does the good Lord see fit to keep me in this vale of tears?”  His mind seemed to wander.  “Would that I might go to the arms of my beloved wife!  Ah, she was so beautiful; I adored her black hair and eyes,” and he went on to tell about their marriage in old Decatur County, Georgia.

            Then he changed his manner.  “Come along, Ruthie.  It’s time for my hot toddy that the doctor prescribed.  I like it better when you have the first spoonful from the top of the glass.”  So for four years - until his death - I had a teaspoon full of hot toddy every morning.

            He pushed the baby walker into the door of the kitchen.  (More than seventy years later, I can still feel its welcoming warmth.)  “Mrs. Morgan, will you be so kind as to prepare my hot toddy now?”  The Mrs. Morgan he referred to was the cook at the hotel who originally came from Poland.  She wore a rounded cap with lace ruching on her head.  Her hair was done up under the cap so none of it would escape and get in the food.

            I remember the other rooms, of course, but the kitchen was the most interesting in the whole house - Morgan’s domain - indeed, the hub of the hotel.  A large black cookstove covered almost all of one side of the room.  The roaring fire in its giant belly was frequently replenished with sticks of stovewood from the great woodbox beside it, the box which everyone who came in from the backyard was supposed to replenish in turn - summer and winter alike.  Morgan allowed no one to sit on the little stool beside it except me.  She always had a kind word for me, a pat on the head and a shoulder for my tears as I grew up.

            How often I was to wish I had taken advantage of the opportunity to become bilingual.  How well I remember Morgan’s expansive figure flipping out the back door, shaking her coat tail and muttering, “Shalum ne duper tach nea.”  I have no more idea now than then of her meaning.

            But Morgan’s words and expressions were to become a permanent part of my vocabulary:  “My rose was bud out but soon was cut down.”  “Right’s right and wrong’s wrong, and right don’t wrong nobody.”  “Did you go all the way to New Baden to get this many dirty dishes?”

            Morgan told me fascinating tales.  She said, “Now set down here, honey, and I’ll tell you about working my way over on a boat from the old country.  Ruthie, I never had on a pair of shoes until I was grown.  In New York I met and married Henry Morgan, who was a carpenter and house painter.  We come to live in Franklin, Texas because there was work in the town.  I’ll have you know that my home across the tracks is as neat as a pin.  Flowers blossom in my hand-dug underground greenhouse all winter long, and my daughters have been raised to be as respectable as the next one.”

            But Mama, Mrs. Minnie Rucker, for whom she was to cook in the National Hotel for more than twenty years, was her real ideal, her mentor.  Morgan said, “I have no idea how old I am nor my actual birthday; so I will just adopt your age as my own, and we will each proudly wear a rose from my greenhouse as a gift for our mutual birthday on January the first.”

            Their fusses were frequently interspersed with much muttering and shaking of coat tails; but Mama was apt to sit on the high stool ever so often and share comforting confidences and a bowl of Morgan’s incomparable soup from the soup kettle which was always on the back of the stove, a mute reminder of her oft-repeated claim:  “I can make good soup if I have the greements.”

            The hotel was Mama’s refuge; even though she left, she always came back.  Morgan took care of the kids when Mama was busy or had gone somewhere.  Morgan always had a favorite child - first Ruth, then a later child - and baked a little cake or roll for her.  There were no telephones in Franklin in those days.  Every morning a clerk from each grocery store would come to the hotel and take the order for the day; then go back and fill it; then deliver it to the back door.  One clerk drove a red wagon pulled by two little mules because no one had cars then.  Later, when there were telephones, Mama had only to phone Gilland Brother’s store and say, “I want a can of peas, Harry,” and he would run down the back way with it - to be met by me.  Mama never had to identify herself.  Her voice was very distinctive.

            I sat on the stool in the corner, as was my habit when there weren’t many people eating in the dining room and I could see, on the opposite side from the stove a long table containing wash pans and drying racks for the dirty dishes brought in from the dining room.  There was the middle table where Minnie was wont to sit, called the serving table.  My favorites were the desserts and salads on a little table to one side just under a homemade cabinet for clean dishes.  One of the most intriguing sights was a big rat-trap always in a prominent place on the floor.  Oh  everything was shipshape in Minnie’s - that is Morgan’s kitchen.

            Just behind the stove I could see a walk-through pantry connecting with the family rooms; and outside the back door was the original pantry, now converted into an ironing room.  “This,” said Mrs. Hattie Andrews, our cleaning maid, “is my domain.”  If she were to list her duties, she might say, “I stand and iron endlessly on stacks of white tablecloths and napkins, and on sheets and pillow cases and sometimes on Ruth’s dresses.  I try to be ready to go upstairs to clean the room after a guest checks out, but the flat irons are always hot on the back of the kitchen stove; and look high, Ruth, all around the one little window the washtubs hang on their pegs.”

            Just outside, I could see the wash yard.  Aunt Fanny’s kingdom.  As she put it, “I has all sorts of dryin’ lines and a big black wash pot.” (The pot which was to sit just outside Ruth’s apartment containing a beautiful flowering fern - so many years later.)  “I pokes the clothes a-bubblin” in the pot.  Then I rinses them in tin wash tubs and hangs ’em out to dry in the sun.”

            Aunt Fanny was an ancient, very black woman who had been a slavery Negro - full of many enchanting tales.  She stated:  “I done been sold from Alabama to a Texas owner and I shorely does recollect when the stars fell on Alabama.  Further mo, my weddin’ to my husband, who y’all calls Uncle Otter, was jus’ tip top, and we will think about it all our days.  We didn’t do no modern weddin’.  We jus’ jumped over a broomstick.”  Oh, she entertained all of us with numerous tales. 

            There were big bois d’arc trees in the backyard and hackberry trees in the front yard.  I used to pop the hackberries with my shoes on the sidewalk.  A cistern in the back side yard was the place from which I loved to draw water with a pulley.  Nearby was the Texas Star flower bed Mama had made from plants and flowers surrounded by Pink Radiance roses - looking like a giant quilt spread open for the world to see.  She had planted a gorgeous American Beauty rose in the center of the star.  Around it were fragrant tube roses.  Tiny snowdrops drooped their heads in its border.  This flower garden was the pride and joy of Mama’s life. 

            Several different people returned to the hotel again and again during the years.  They seemed almost like members of the family.  For example, Dr. Ellis of the University of Texas conducted experiments on land nearby.  Mr. and Mrs. Schoenburg, a retired couple from Wisconsin, came every year.  They were so fascinated with Mama’s far-sighted plans drawn for a new hotel that they loaned her money to build a brick hotel on the spot where the old frame one had stood.  Mr. Michael Lime, a geologist, died at the hotel, leaving a little carved monkey which could see, hear or speak no evil.  I have that monkey; I keep it.  Every time I look at it, I think about Mama - whom I can hear saying, “That’s good advice.  Listen to that little monkey!”  Mrs. Rucker considered the boarders her family, so she felt justified in eavesdropping on whatever they said.  Miss Masterson, Miss Atell, who gave me a little hand painted tea set, Mr. Will Coffield, Mr. Edmundson, Judge Lane from Hearne - all and many more came over and over again.

            Judge Lane came rushing in late one afternoon explaining volubly, “I want to check out.  I won’t be able to spend the night with you, Mrs. Rucker.”  Realizing to late what he had said, he blundered on, “Oh, but you don’t understand.  I have a ride to Hearne, and I won’t be able to sleep with you tonight.”  Mama was never allowed to live this incident down.

            A young man, a former Franklin resident, came to the hotel every two or three years with a crew of girls selling magazines.  They were always noisy, and were quite popular with the local male citizenry.  One morning at two a.m. Minnie had had all of it she could stand; so she stalked up the stairs calling out:  “You will have to get these girls out of my house right now, this instant.  Not only have I nor my other guest slept a wink, but when two of Franklin’s leading drunks try to slip up the back stairs, that is enough.” 

            In those days before school buses, Mama was responsible for several country boys getting to go to high school by working at the hotel for room and board.  She made them realize the value of an education and saw to it that they studied.  A great love for education was one of Mama’s predominant characteristics; she wanted everyone to get as much education as possible.  This had started when her mother slipped and fell on the step of a surrey and broke her hip.  Always college had remained there, peeping over Minnie’s shoulder.  She had wanted Jimmie to go to college.  Jimmie had wanted her own children to go.  Mama wanted me to go.  My daughter, Jean must go.  To Minnie, Robert, and their children, there was no other way of life than going to college.  I think Mama’s granddaughter, Minnie, pleased her more than any of the rest of us because she was valedictorian of Franklin High School the year she graduated.

            I remember, especially Sam Sanders who just sailed over the iron fence surrounding the front yard, not deigning to open the gate.  But Hollis Frazier took the cake.  One day a couple of ladies came in from a parked car and asked if they could go to the restroom.  Hollis looked at them with a puzzled expression for a minute and then escorted them to the parlor door saying, “You can rest in there, Mrs. Rucker won’t care.”           

            Those were days of outdoor toilets.  The Ladies Toilet for the National Hotel, a four-holer, was inside the back fence, so it was not locked.  Nearby, but separated, with its entrance outside the fence, was The Men’s Toilet.  This building always fascinated me for I was not allowed ever to enter it.  The key to the outside john hung on the first post in the office.  Mr. Siverman would take the key down and stay for what seemed an inordinately long time in the men’s john.  One day I sneaked the key and looked at the place.  There was nothing very strange about it save the trough-like looking thing just inside, the huge signs advertising medicine for gonorrhea and gleet, and the four letter words written all over the walls which I was not permitted to use, but which I later read in Ginsberg’s poetry. 

            Mr. Silverman was our permanent guest.  To Mama, he seemed to belong.  To me, Mr. Abe Silverman was the only man always in my life.  His room was upstairs at the head of the stairway.  It contained the most beautiful wash stand I had ever seen, with two little high marble shelves on each side.  There was a bowl and pitcher in each room, and a tall Betsy; but there was just one bathroom and one toilet on each floor - even in the later rebuilt hotel.

            I often heard Mr. Silverman’s stories about how he had started his business career with a pack on his back.  Going through the country, he would peddle his novelties and necessities; later he had a general mercantile business in Franklin and a jewelry store and several other buildings in Waco.  Mr. Silverman never married but had brought numerous brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews from the old country to the United States.  They lived in Hearne, Texas and New York City - both of which seemed far away to me.  He was decidedly civic-minded, gave the money for a sidewalk to be placed all around the new school building, and was on every committee for the good of the town, and was such a good domino player that men would drive for miles to play by his rules.

            Every night at supper, where the people had a boarding house reach for the sausage and smoked ham, Mr. Abe would watch the biscuit plate carefully until someone took the last biscuit.  Then he would rub his hands together exultingly, gloatingly, and pounce:  “Just enuff beeskits!”  On other occasions he would rub his hands together pleasurably and contentedly:  “Mrs. Rucker, there are nice things you serve to eat that I like.  All of  ‘ems hash.”

            At meal time, Robert would go through his little spiel about “What will you have to drink?  Buttermilk, sweetmilk, iced tea, hot tea, cofeeeeeeee” - drawling it out and almost making a song of it.  Then - “What kinda pie will you have?  Coconut, pecan, chocolate?”  There was always a choice from soup to nuts, and he always saved a little sliver of pie for me.

            But Mr. Abe was especially attentive to me.  Frequently, he would take me on his knee and come out with “Molly Bailey’s circus is coming to town.  Ain’t that wonnerful?  They got fourteen elephants.  Why-y-y-y-y, Rut, your eyes are as big as saucers.”

            One habit of Mr. Abe’s which I will never forget was his usual custom on Christmas Eve.  He would come down the street from Gilland Brother’s store with a cherry grin on his face, crying out, “Creesmus gift! Creesmus gift!”  Then he would hand each member of the family a small square package.  We did not need to open them.  Year after year they contained the same gift; a ladies white handkerchief with a small colored flower embroidered in the corner.  I don’t think anyone ever thought of saying “Happy Hanukkah!” to him. 

            Mama looked at me reflectively.  “You know, Ruthie, you make me think of your sister Jimmie when she was a little girl.  (She often said this when my stool would be out of place in the kitchen.)  Your father, Henry, was extremely bashful.  It was hard on him to come courting me.  He always wore a black hat in those days, which he would place on the hall tree just inside the front door.  Jimmie was very orderly child, and she would take his hat, march over to the big man who was later to become her stepfather and put it determinedly in his hands - every time he came.”

            Then her mind would wander even father back and she would tell me stories of her own childhood.  “I know you can’t imagine, Ruth, what it was like to be the youngest daughter in a family of thirteen children.  I’m sure I was spoiled rotten as I played around happily, usually with my dog for a companion.  My father idolized me; one of the ways he showed it was to make me his companion on our annual shopping spree to Kosse.  We raised nearly all our food on the farm, and my mother and sisters canned or dried food all year long.  But there were some things we had to buy such as sugar, rice, flour, baking power, soda, fresh fruits, and - best of all - material for making clothes, even though the tow sacks for other products were always utilized for aprons, quilt tops, and dish towels.  But I always got to select the bolts of material for making our dresses and boys’ shirts and underwear.  You may be sure, Ruth, that they were very colorful and eye-stopping.

            “And guess what, dear; I got to spend the night in the wagon yard with my father.  That might have been the first time that I got to stay in a hotel, but Papa and I would just sleep in the back of the wagon, cuddled under my mother’s handmade quilts.  The noises would keep me awake for some time, but after awhile I’d fall asleep and dream contentedly of our wagon loaded and ready to go, and of Old John pulling us over the long, lonely miles through rolling hills beneath the cloudless sky of a Texas golden autumn.”

            Mama’s thoughts flew from subject to subject like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower.  She picked up a picture of my younger brother who had died before I was born, and looked at it sadly.  I, Ruth, called him “Little Duffey”, since he had died at the age of four months and so would always remain “Little Duffey.”

            Mama’s hands were best kept busy piecing quilts.  Sometimes she made one a night - probably more than one thousand altogether.  The best one, I thought, was the Oak Leaf and Acorn.  Each oak leaf and acorn was stuffed separately to give the whole a three dimensional and sculptured look.  She made one for me, but after she had the chance to sell it, she made me another.  The stitches are not so perfect and some of the material is faded, but the quilt hidden away in my cedar chest is still beautiful.

            When Mama was really in a lonely mood, she’d work all night.  The cares of the day seemingly would just slip away when she made a Friendship Quilt.  All the friends of the recipient would embroider their names on prepared blocks.  Then Mama would put them together and quilt them with intricate patterns.  She made a quilt for each new bride in the family, she also made one for each new baby; in fact, she would start on one just as soon as a relative was pregnant.

            Mama was never satisfied with a plain pattern.  She’d buy all sorts of patterns and combine and change them - often making up completely new ones.  She made one called the Star of Russia, one called Double Star, and one Lily of the Valley.  She quilted them in shell designs.  One special design was called The Chambered Nautilus.  She sent a Star of Texas as a gift to F. D. Roosevelt in the White House; Mama treasured the letter of thanks she received signed “Eleanor.”

            She made many for rooms in the hotel.  They saved money, and supplied warn cover.  She worked on them for the need of it, for she was never more relaxed than when she was making a quilt.  But during the last few years in the hotel, her eyes were bad; so she turned to crocheting and knitting and embroidery.  Her innate talent for making things was shown by using larger needles, making geometric designs on the sewing machine and appliqueing flowers on unbleached domestic.  She set up a quilting frame in my room when I went to college because it had the space for a 20-foot frame.  Making quilts and all the other handwork satisfied a basic desire in her nature - the creation of Beauty.

            A really red letter day in Mama’s life was the one on which she sold the Oak Leaf and Acorn quilt to a drummer for the unheard sum of fifty dollars.  She laid hands on the money and took Jimmie, her niece Alys Truett, Miss Kitty Davlin, and me to Galveston for a weekend.  She had to make bathing suits, complete with sleeves and bloomers, for us all.

            Mama was a real seamstress.  I have seen her cut out a dress for Little Minnie after two p.m., prepare and serve supper in between, and have an attractive garment finished for her granddaughter to wear somewhere that night.  Sewing for herself, her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren was like the cobbler’s shoes; her own clothes were often pinned together, and teaching her skills to others was never to her liking. 

            Mrs. Rucker was essentially modest; she never went out of her room without being fully clothed, including corsets.  The worst whipping I ever got was for going to get a drink from the cooler in the lobby, the lobby full of men, and me with no panties under my dress.

            Minnie was the girl from Headsville who never went to college, was well read, and knew the dictionary page by page.  She had been able to answer her husband Henry’s question:  “Minnie where is Eggwipt?”  With laughter, the interpretation was “Egypt.”  The correction of “victiny” for “vicinity” was made of me - with a Master’s degree from college.

            Minnie’s lifelong ambition was to be a nurse.  She nursed her mother, her father, her children, her grandchildren.  Sitting behind the counter, she wrote a letter to her niece, Vance:  “I never have colds anymore.  When I feel one coming on, I get a small bottle of camphor, set the end of my finger in it, and apply to my nostrils, inhaling the vapor.  Don’t try to drop it in the nose as it is too strong.  Then I touch my tongue to the bottle and let the saliva drop down my throat.  This is the best and simplest thing for colds I have ever tried.  Hope you will get some immediately and give it a try.”  How happy she was when her granddaughter, Frances, became a nurse!

            It was Mama’s nature to be hopeful and to look on the bright side of things.  She wrote to another niece, “I am a lover of chickens.  I have fifteen hen and nine little chicks now.  They are Buff Opringtons and will multiply.  I have a good garden spot; it was crowded out with weeds this year, but I have it nice and clean now, and hope to have a great garden next year.”  In addition to all her other duties, she was a canner of meat, home grown vegetables, and fruits like peaches and pears. 

            Mama’s hotel was Mama’s home.  During the years, numerous relatives came to visit her.  Mama always met them at the door, threw her arms around them, and they felt a happy sense of family.  Her brother, Tom, for example, had died recently.  His wife, Fanny, came and brought her three girls, Vada, Alma, and Iva.  Minnie took the girls to a local hat shop and bought them each a red hat.

            Her sister Maris Erwin arrived from Oklahoma.  With her were her four children, including one named Sam.  Minnie thought that not one of them must have ever had a decent meal in his life.  They followed her around whining jealously, I wanna piece.  Sam’s gotta piece.”  It was the grandson of Maris who became Oral Roberts of later television fame.

            The only one of Minnie’s immediate family living in Franklin was her sister Nan.  Nan’s girls, Eula, Nannie, and Lottie, were very close to their Aunt Minnie; also her boys, Ernest, Bruce, and Jim.  And Alys - well, she was something special, always warm, full of life - enough like her Aunt Minnie to really be her own daughter.  She had many visits with her sister Sally’s children and brother Pete’s.

            Through the years, however, Minnie spoke often of her brother Nat - the nearest of her brothers and sisters in age and in love.  She remembered the December night when he had returned home after having to swim a nearby river.  He had taken off his overcoat and it had stood on the floor, alone, frozen.  Minnie often told of the many parallels in their lives - their marriages, the births of their first children.  No, life would never be the same without Nat.  She remembered what he had written so long ago in her autograph book: 

“Should fortune smile on Thee
and pleasant make thy lot,
Dear sister, think of me
and pray, forget me not.
Should fortune frown on thee,
 and trouble gather fast.
You have a friend where
friendship long shall last.” 

            Minnie like to reminisce.  She often told stories she had heard about the Holtons coming to Texas from Macon, Georgia in a covered wagon driven by oxen.  Her parents had stopped for two weeks in Jasper, Texas waiting for her, Minnie, to be born.  “Ruthie”, she said, “I want to tell you about when my parents moved on to dear old Robertson County.  My brother, Billy, stayed in Jasper; there to marry, there to raise his family.  Jasper seemed as far away then as New York is today.”

            Mama remembered she had worked hard in her father’s house to pay for the marker for her first husband’s - Jim’s - grave.  The Woodmen of the World later bought a marker for her second husband’s - Henry’s - grave.  Mama said, “I want them both to lie together so I can grieve for both of them in that homey cemetery at Headsville by the side of dear old Ebenezer Church.”  Many years later, her children were to lay her remains in the peaceful cemetery.  Some day my own daughter, Jean, will lay her mother to rest beside my mother.

            Then Mama’s mind wandered to tales which she had told me so often of old John, harnassed to the family surrey or the wagon, going unerringly to the same shady spot in front of old Ebenezer Church where he would stand - unhitched - for hours.  “I tell you, Ruthie, I remember vividly the day my mother’s foot missed the bottom step of the surrey, resulting in her broken hip.  I can still feel the same numbness that I felt that morning I went into the house and unpacked my clothes - all ready to go to Baylor Female College in Belton.  I realized that someone had to cook and wash, and iron for my father and the boys; and my mother could no longer do it.”  The next year, Jim Weeden had come along; she had loved him; she married him; she buried him; she had borne his daughter.  She was only fifteen, a wife instead of a girl, ripe for the experiences college had to offer. 

            Mama always loved to take pictures.  Many of the events of her life were preserved in the pictures which she placed in a rounded-corner album.  She had only a tintype of Jim Weeden, but she prized it highly; it and her daughter Jimmie were all that she had to remind her of that gay young Lothario who had passed through her life so long ago.  One of her favorite pictures was of my father, Henry, herself, and my brother Robert and sister Jimmie as small children.  They were all sitting on the front porch of their little two-room house at Bald Prairie.  Mama was seated, warm, motherly, and relaxed.  Henry was seated by her side, serious strict, and dependable.  A hound lurked under the front steps.

            Yet, now I can look at this same picture which hangs on the wall of my apartment and I see that Mama, too, had those characteristics.  She had the ability to adapt herself to every mishap of life, to gather up the loose ends and go forward.  Her backbone was straight.  Nothing deterred her.  Mama gave to all of us whatever abilities we have to stand up to life’s vicissitudes.  She was as sturdy as an oak. 

            At times, then, I was bored by Mama’s oft-repeated stories of her early life.  Now, I wish that I had listened more carefully.  They are a great part of my heritage.  Too bad that we have to grow “too soon old and too late wise.”  How I wish that I was able to set down more of Mama’s recollections; that would be worthwhile.  But now, I guess I’d better get back to the things I do remember about our life in the National Hotel.

            We had only one picture show a week in Franklin.  On Friday and Saturday nights, our family usually took off-en masse!  Few drummers came to a small town over the weekend anyway, and Mr. Silverman was always around in case anyone did come.  Everything was left wide open at the hotel.  A note, posted on the front door, listed vacant rooms and stated:  “Gone to the picture show.  Be back by 7:30.”  Mama took her little purse in her hands; we crossed by a dirt road; and we were off to that magic place where “visions of sugar plums floated in our heads.”  We were to be entertained by the antics of Charlie Chaplin; we were to be enamored by Rudolph Valentino; we were to be thrilled, week after week, by the exploits of Pearl White, Yeah, those were the days!

            Sometimes, my sister Jimmie played the piano at the picture show.  This was before movies had sound tracks, so they were completely silent.  She described her job there:  “I figured  out music which fitted the scene and played it to get the audience in the mood.  The most popular song I played was Whispering, a suitable song for love scenes; but when I’d play Home on the Range in western movies, the people in the audience would stomp and gallop with the deer and the antelope.”

            On the day  Jimmie got married, Mama summed up her life.  “I am a Hotel owner, and manager.  Twice widowed from fine young men.  My daughter, Jimmie Weeden Garrett, gone on the train off to the home of her husband, Frank, in faraway West Virginia.  Oh, what a send-off my family and Franklin friends had given them at the railroad station across the street.  But that is all over, and I am back at the National Hotel - alone, except for Ruth.”

            She rushed in to prepare supper for Mr. Silverman and the other guests.  Gradually she became conscious that I, her youngest, was nowhere to be found.  After searching all of my favorite haunts, Mama discovered me sitting dejectedly all alone in the middle of the front porch steps.  I looked up at her and sobbed, “Mama, I hate men.  I hate the man you called my father.  Sometimes I hate my brother.  I hate Frank Garrett. Oh, Mama, I never intend to marry - as long as I can help it.”

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