By Ruth Rucker Lemming
1982, Eakin Publishers

Chapter IV

"To tell sad stories of my own mishaps" -- William Shakespeare

With Emphasis on Verna Ruth Rucker Lemming Called Ruth or Aunt Ruth

            Difficulties! Difficulties! Difficulties!  I encounter many of them as I try to write about myself.  How nearly impossible it is to comment on a commentator!  So I am finding it a hard task to write about myself in the same way that I write about others.  But I am a part of this story; therefore I’ll try. 

            An assignment I made to my speech students early each semester was to talk about the guiding principles of their lives.  Well, at the risk of being misunderstood, I suppose I’d have to say that the guiding principle of my life is service to others.  If I can help someone, I like to do it.  There! I’ve said the hardest part to put into words; so let’s get on with it! 

            I don’t remember when we first came to the National Hotel that was to exert such a great influence on my life, but I do remember running away from my grandfather and into the open arms of my big brother, Robert, whenever I go into trouble.  But he was a boy and could not understand the difficulties of being a girl, so I frequently turned to Mama whenever I could find her free for a moment.  Even though, she understood me better, her maturity gave me a grown up viewpoint that seemed to endow me with a wisdom far beyond my years. 

            So, somehow, I have always been grown, I never had time nor inclination to do and say childish things.  I took on responsibilities and had few minutes to waste on juvenile pursuits.  Athletic contests had no appeal for me; I never cared for jokes or humor, games were not fascinating.  Not until I was grown and out on my own to make my way among my peers did I take the time for relaxation and play - but not in my childhood or young girlhood.  Then, I assumed grown up characteristics such as standing on tiptoe to reach dishes up to the table, standing up on a chair behind the counter collecting from the drummers - and making change - to their everlasting satisfaction, eating a piece of chicken as I went rushingly back to school after running home to perform duties, taking care of younger children - serious care - feeling very much their Aunt Ruth, I took no thought of the pleasures of being young but only of the unfortunate ordeals of trying to be adult before my time. 

            I do not have too many memories of my girlhood, but I do remember that Mr. Silverman was always around and that Mama kept a mental tab on the time of day by the things he did.  He always walked up the street about 9:30, visited Gilland Brothers’ store, talked with several people on the street, and then came back to the Hotel by 11:00.  He would sit around in the lobby and talk with anyone else who might be there till it was lunch time.  After eating, he’d go upstairs to take a nap.  After he came back down he always rode me on his knee and told me about Mollie Bailey’s Circus and her fourteen elephants.  I took it all in - wide-eyed!  And about once a week there were very few drummers at the hotel.  Most of them either went to a bigger city or to their homes for the weekend.  Mr. Silverman would take me into the holy of holies and try to teach me to play dominoes.  Well, at least I had a good teacher!  All the traveling men tease him about having a little black rulebook full of his domino tricks.  They knew that the only two words he could read or write were “Abe Silverman” at the bottom of a check or legal document.  But any one of them would have been proud to accept such a check. 

            They tell me I was a favorite with the drummers who patronized our hotel,  When I only four years old, Mama had taught me all of Longfellow’s The Village Blacksmith.  One of the men would pick me up and put me on the desk in the lobby of the hotel (which we called the “office.”  Oh, how the division of the words in the front window fascinated me - HOT-EL-OFF-ICE.)  “Now then”, he’d say, “Let’s hear Little Ruth in The Village Blacksmith.”  You may be sure that the nickels and dimes rained about my feet when I’d get to:  “The muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands.” 

            One of the most wonderful times of my life was the summer Mama, Alys Truett and I took a trip to West Virginia.  I got on the first boat I had ever been on in New Orleans and we sailed to New York.  There Alys and Mama went out to hunt for a Baptist Church and left me at the hotel with a maid for a nurse.  I had been sick since our ship landed, so I do not have many happy memories of the Big Apple.  However, my memories of West Virginia, our picnics, our horseback rides, and visit to an old abandoned mine were much more vivid.  Beside, I often had Connie to myself, to play with and care for - my very own niece!  The first one I ever had!  And to think that I got to bring her back to Texas with me. 

            Every Saturday morning, Mama would send me over to Peter Edward’s negro cafe to buy some fish to serve at the hotel.  This was a rare privilege, as Peter always bought a small barrel of fish once a week.  While his wife, Lizzie, was getting my fish, I always played awhile with their two children.  They were smart, very dear little girls who grew up to be schoolteachers. 

            Somehow, my friendship with Peter Edward’s children, with Betty, our colored cook, with Aunt Fannie Porch, with our Polish cook, Morgan, my close relationship with Mr. Silverman and the Blonstein boys, who were in my room at school, enabled me to grow up in a small Southern town without any prejudices of race, creed or color.  But I will have to confess that some of the race riots the last few years, some of the wetback activities, and practically open door policies to foreign refugees leave me cold. 

            A very interesting area in Franklin was the old Overall place which we passed several times a day on our way to town or school.  It was located where the First State Bank is now.  Mrs. Overall still lived there then, with her brother, Ed Linton, in a big dilapidated house.  It had been a resort and show place when the mineral well had produced, but it had fallen on hard times after the water was discovered in Marlin. There were the remains of flowers in the strictly formal beds surrounding the grounds, and we would reach through the wrought iron fence and pick some to take to the teacher at school, who always put them in an empty ink bottle filled with water.  We’d try to peep into the windows of the house, but they were too dust covered to see through.  We were deathly afraid of Ed Linton who sometimes chased us down the street - with no bad intentions, however, merely guarding his sister’s property.  Poor Ed; he was mentally retarded; but we always thought the house was haunted. 

            The first swimming pool in Franklin was at Gum Branch where they’d build a dam each summer because the winter rains would wash out the dam.  We had a separate boys’ and girls’ bathhouse to change clothes in.  They had no roofs over them - just board sides with a door and steps leading down to the water.  Minnie, I think, hated the home-made bathing suits more than any of Mama’s children or grandchildren.  One summer Mama made on her old treadle Singer sewing machine (which still sits in my middle room) bathing suits for all of us.  They were made of blue serge, with long legs and short sleeves, red and white braid around the collars, and long over blouses.  I am reminded of the first all rubber bathing suit seen in Franklin at Mr. Elmo Reynold’s Variety Store.  Minnie worked there on Saturdays, and she was such a favorite with him that he always gave her all sorts of things that were not selling well in the store.  So she fell heir to this bathing suit which she managed to wear in swimming - once - before Mama saw it and made her throw it away.  Mama would let us go swimming, but I had to rush home just about the time everybody else got there, to help with supper. 

            Sometimes a jury would stay overnight at the hotel.  A deputy slept outside in the hall to see that no one communicated with the jury.  We prepared and carried the noon meal to juries in the courthouse and to election holders in the library.  What an interesting break that was in the regular routine of serving meals at the hotel.  I’d open glass jars, put the food from hot containers into big bowls, and serve myriad glasses of iced tea, already sweetened, from the old churn that Mama had sent; it was kept for many years for the jury tea. 

            I was twelve when Jimmie came home to live with her two children - just the right age to take care of them as they grew up.  First, Connie and Frances and then, soon Minnie and Robert.  Four more for Mama to provide for.  I was just enough older than the kids to have to care for them, but I loved every minute of it because I loved them all four dearly, and we grew up with a strange, sweet relationship to each other that put these words in Robert’s mouth the day he graduated from Texas A&M:  “You know, Aunt Ruth, you’ve always been a kind of combination mother-sister-sweetheart to me all my life.” 

            When they were little, Aunt Ruth was the one who got up in the night to take them to the bathroom.  I usually had to go myself.  I was the one who rushed to get them ready to go to Sunday School or entertained them.  One day we were at Louis Gray’s playing baseball.  Robert swallowed a dime.  I ran all the way home carrying him upside down trying to shake out the dime.  In answer to my frantic cries, Mama came running out the back door, grabbed Robert and beat him on the back; and up came the coin. 

            We were never embarrassed about doing any of the hotel chores.  We would empty the tall Betsys and clean them out, change the beds and sweep the floors.  Mama lived by the philosophy:  “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” and we never felt that we had a hard row to hoe.  Nor did we feel that any task was menial.  They were just jobs that had to be done, and besides there was always the next night.  As Mr. Silverman said, “Another day, another dollar.” 

            One night there was a big fire in Franklin.  All the stores from Mitchell’s corner down to the hotel garden were burning.  Gigantic flames leapt toward the sky.  It looked as bad to me as the T.V. pictures of the Woodway Apartments fire in July, 1979, in Houston.  Men pulled quilts (most of which were made by Mama’s hands) from beds, wet them, and placed them up on our roof to repel the sparks which were flying everywhere.  People formed bucket brigades which passed buckets, bowls, pitchers, any type of containers, full of water down the line and saved many buildings thereby.  I carried mattresses out frantically to the pitiful clumps of furniture assembled in the yard.  One boy and I carried our piano out and down the front steps.  Fright can do wonders, (Like the illustration I often used in speech classes about the Negro man near Houston who seemed to have super human powers to lift a car off the ground in order to save the life of a white man trapped beneath the burning wreckage.) 

            The four kids were awakened in the middle of the night, each one wrapped in a blanket, and taken to a nearby ditch.  They didn’t dare to move, in response to my quoted orders from Mama, while I carried out mattresses and pianos.  After the fire was extinguished, I took them up to Aunt Nan’s where they slept on the floor on their blankets.  Robert, now a professor-emeritus from Texas A & M, said to me recently:  “I don’t remember anything about the fire.  All I can recollect is that we had only cornflakes for breakfast served with milk fresh from the cow.  I ate a whole box of cornflakes.”  Strange how things like that stay in one’s memory! 

            I can remember so many of the drummers who used to come to the hotel - weekly, monthly, or even semi-annually.  They had favorite rooms, and they were always greeted as old friends, usually asking for Abe when they first arrived. 

            Miss Axtell was a visitor who came once a year for several years.  Her nephew Dick was investing in land all over Texas and had one plot near Franklin.  She was a sparse New Englander with a decided English accent.  Her usual attire was a long black taffeta skirt topped by a crisp white long-sleeved blouse.  A little gold watch which she wore pinned over her heart always fascinated me.  Miss Axtell stayed long enough one summer to have a china painting class with some of the children in town.  I was rather small to take lessons, but she often let me join them anyhow.  I can still remember her saying:  “Now girrrrrrls, you must observe the flowers carefully and paint in every leaf and petal on your plates.” 

            Miss Axtell gave me a child’s hand painted china tea set which became one of my most prized possessions.  I almost took it to college with me.  Once when I came home from college, I found that Mama had let the children play with it and with all my playthings and that the whole tea set was broken except for one little handleless cup.  I cried over it a little, but I could not remain angry long because I was so glad to see them all and they were my very own charges - my own nieces and nephew and could therefore do no wrong.  They were too young to realize its value to me.  But that little cup, with the broken handle, went everywhere with me that I have ever lived:  Elgin, Lott, Calvert, Bryan, California, Washington, Oklahoma, Tyler, Temple, Wharton, Houston.  It now occupies a prominent place on the black whatnot shelf that Uncle Polk had handmade for me so many years ago.  The little Dutch girl is still feeding the swan - all alone, just one little girl who lost all her companions on the other broken dishes.  I am reminded of Keats’ ’Ode On A Grecian Urn - 

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” 

            Mama was an ardent WCTUer and later a prohibitionist, but she would occasionally have a glass of brother’s home brew beer and she made a bowl of eggnog every Christmas for the family.  This was one of the contradictions in Mama’s nature.  So naturally I thought of her when a group of boys and girls wanted to go up to Mildred’s to make some eggnog one Christmas afternoon.  Mildred had taught school several years at that time, and I had been to college two years and I had taught school one year.  So I don’t believe there was a question of our maturity.  Besides, we already had the nog. 

            I offered:  “O.K. if none you young people know how to make eggnog, I’ll go straight to headquarters and find out.”  So I asked Mama how to make it. 

            Her response was:  “Now Ruthie, you know I don’t believe in drinking - and, for certain not in boys and girls drinking together.  I know that if Mrs. Beall was living she wouldn’t approve of you doing that.  Liquor is one arm of the devil -----------” and so on for about ten minutes. 

            Then Mama proceeded to tell me exactly how to make it! 

            Mama was always interested in politics and one of her pet peeves was Jim Ferguson.  Once he came to Franklin campaigning for governor; a room had been reserved for him at the National Hotel.  Mama discovered that I had put a poster advertising his opponent on the wall of his room.  She made me take it down.  I did what she told me, but I managed to find a poster of Jim to take its place; on his picture I drew a mustache. 

            Mama and I had a very close relationship.  I nearly always went home and told her everything that had happened at an important or unimportant occasion that I went to.  But I felt differently the first time a boy asked to walk home with me.  Besides, I had already figured out my answer to his request to kiss me goodnight.  When he said:  “There is nothing wrong with it,” I would answer:  “There’s nothing right with it either.”  So I was quite humiliated when he just brought me to the edge of the porch in front of the sample room, turned without a word, and ran back up the street. 

            When I got in the house, Mama’s questions were particularly irksome.  “How many boys were there?  How many girls?  What games did you play?  Who had to pay forfeits?  Was the hostess’ mother in the room with you?  What did they have for refreshments?” 

            I had managed to answer all her questions fairly and honestly.  However, I became more irritated with each query.  Then she came out with the $64,000 question:  “Who was that little boy who walked home with you?” 

            I had become thoroughly indignant by this time so I blurted out:  “I--I--I think it was John Steele.” 

            Never did I live this down.  Even after I was grown, Mama would occasionally ask me:  “Well, Ruthie, who do you think the boy was that you went out with tonight?” 

            The children all loved for me to read to them.  I read Five Little Peppers and How they grew and Anne of Green Gables aloud so many times that I almost knew them by heart.  Frances would always fall asleep in the middle of my reading and then wake up with a start.  Despite her begging, no one would tell her a thing about the part she had missed. 

            I got in the habit of saving all the place cards, decorations, and favors of everything I went to, particularly while I was in college.  I did not have much money to spend on presents, so I tried to share things with the four kids.  They would all sit around with wide opened eyes and hands when Aunt Ruth would come home.  I brought them such mementos as ribbons, tassels, napkins (even used ones), and printed programs (which I summarized for them - with gestures.)  Then I would apportion them out to the four who kept and cherished them reverently. 

            Children nowadays have so many gifts for Christmas.  Our children always hung up their stockings and I played Santa Claus and had great fun filling them.  But they did not get great multitudes of expensive gifts such as children do now.  They would get apiece or two of fruit - an apple or an orange, maybe some candy and nuts; a small present or two such as a comb and brush or mirror, a book, a small toy.  Flinch cards with red roses on them; and then perhaps one real gift such as a doll, a picture, a purse, or a little train.  But they loved all the things very much and treasured and played with them for years. 

            When I was 16 years old, Mama sent me to Baylor College Academy.  She explained her reasons to Mr. Silverman thus:  “Ruth never had any real childhood.  She’s always had somebody to take care of; and I’m not going to have her take care of my poor Sister Sally who is coming to live with us.  She has rheumatoid arthritis, and is almost an invalid.  I want Ruth to have a chance to live life joyfully and be carefree while she’s still a girl.  Besides, I don’t want her to waste a year.   She only has to make two more credits to be a high school graduate, and she can take her Freshman work in college at the same time.”  Mr. Silverman understood this reasoning.  It was economic.  So off I went - joyfully, despite changing trains in Milano at night. 

            I spent four of the happiest years of my life in Baylor College - although I had to overcome a very bad case of homesickness for my family and hotel life. 

            College was much the same for me as it was for any girl in the ‘20s.  The rules were strict; the activities were excellent; the classes opened new worlds for me; and the associations were wonderful.  I shall try to give two examples of each of these to help explain why after more than 50 years I can still sing:  “Old Baylor, dear Baylor.  My heart clings to thee.” 

            One would have to begin with rules, for they were very rigid about behavior on Sundays.  We were herded like sheep and made to march downtown to church.  We had sack lunches given to us at noon for supper that night which we always ate about 2 or 3 o’clock and then suffered from hunger the rest of the time, unless someone had recently received a box from home or had a bunch of candy bars. 

            But my sin was that I had dared to ask if I could go riding with Alice Evans and her parents from Franklin who had driven over to see us one Sunday afternoon.  I didn’t have written permission from Mama to go, so Mrs. Ely refused to sign my permit.  As we went out in the hall I sobbed, “I’m not going to stay in this rotten place another day.  I’m going home tomorrow.”  Mrs. Ely overheard me and called me back to her room where I had to stay for an hour, on my knees, praying to the Lord to forgive me.  You’d better believe that Mama sent me a blanket permission to go out with anyone I wanted to from that time on. 

            Mama, always alert to new things, rented Miss Mamye McCoy the parlor of the hotel for a week one summer vacation to give the new permanent waves with a big electric machine.  She gave Frances a free one for demonstration.  There were tight little curls all over her head, which Frances thought were beautiful.  I decided to get one too before going back to Baylor in the fall.  Miss Mayme had finished rolling up my hair.  She had put the clamps on and had just turned on the electricity; then something happened; the electricity went off!  There was nothing to do but wait.  Some men came over from Hearne to work on it; they got it back on late that afternoon.  I entertained all the customers and hotel guests in the meantime by reciting reams of poetry.  The results of my first permanent were not too satisfactory, and for the next several months I usually wore a big bandana to hide the frizz on my head. 

            I must digress even more for a moment here to tell about the very first permanent wave ever given in Franklin several years previously.  Mama had rented out two rooms to the traveling ladies who advertised the wonderful discovery.  Minnie was only ten years old, but she desperately wanted a permanent.  Brother found her crying in the ironing room. 

            “Come on, Kooter, Tell Daddy what’s the matter.” 

            Minnie sobbed:  “I am tired of having my hair rolled up on a string so it will be curly.” 

            “For God’s sake, Mama; let her get a permanent wave if she wants it.” 

            So Mama yielded to the argument that the cost of the wave would be taken out of the room rent and Minnie got her heart’s desire.  It took all day, but she loved it.  She promised herself that she would never do without a permanent again if she had to scrub floors to pay for it, and so far as I know, she never has. 

            The other story I shall tell is about the Sunday night a bunch of us were so hungry that we just couldn’t stand it, so we went to Mrs. Ely’s private garden behind the dormitory to try to swipe a few vegetables.  We were vigorously pulling up some green onions when a bright light flashed on us.  It was Mrs. Ely holding a flashlight.  We ran fleetly around the dorm and into the front door, Mrs. Ely in hot pursuit.  We had the presence of mind to run to the bathroom on the second floor and flush the onions down the toilet.  And we were sound asleep in our beds on the third floor with the cover pulled up tightly when Mrs. Ely went from room to room to check the girls.  I feel compelled to say that the next day they had to get a plumber to unstop two commodes on the second floor. 

            In my listing above I said the activities were excellent.  I will leave out all the superior religious groups, everything connected with student government and class offices, the literary societies (which took the place of sororities and fraternities) and all the numerous class and social activities with which our campus teemed and I will talk a little bit about the two activities which meant the most to me - the Debate Squad and the Choral Club. 

            I go into debate almost by accident, and somehow found the square peg that fitted the square hole.  My deep interest in public affairs, my love of research, and my knowledge of some of the principles of logical reasoning stem from this association.  Two years I won the college debate pin.  I took many wonderful trips, had the privilege of knowing, personally, the debate coach, Dr. Vann, with the richness that he brought to my life, got to work with and know the president’s daughter, Martha Hardy, with Alma Lee Joiner and Cora Whitley, and all the wonderful bunch of girls who participated in debate, and was a charter member of Phi Theta Kappa and helped to  win the national championship. 

            The other activity in which I wanted to put my best foot forward was the Choral Club.  With Mrs. Allie Coleman Pierce as director, we sang at many affairs both on and off the campus and took a tour each year, two weeks away from the campus, and the entertainment was royal.  The only fly in the ointment was that I always had to wear a white evening dress that my mother had hand made.  I thought that everyone else was wearing a store-bought dress.  I’m sure that this was the guiding principle behind my buying my daughter a black ready-made evening dress for fifty dollars when she was only a Junior in high school.  That and the fact that I could not possibly have made one at all - much less with the loving stitches which Mama had put in mine. 

            At Baylor I grew up mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  Most of the beauty and inspiration of my life came to me there.  I gained 25 pounds in weight and I learned so many wonderful things in my classes.  I was very busy and happy, particularly in Dr. William Harvey Vann’s Shakespeare and modern poetry classes and - and - and oh! everything that Dr. Billy Vann taught.  After my freshman English, every course I took in English was taught by Mr. Billy in his own inimitable style.  That’s the reason why my English major had 15 extra hours that did not count on my degree.  No person, other that my mother, had a greater influence on my life and interests.  Not a day passed while I was teaching that I did not quote him. 

            Mr. Vann gave me a leather bound copy of Shakespeare’s plays in which he wrote the inscription:  To Ruth Rucker on the occasion of her second unanimous victory.”  This I shall treasure for all my life.  My love for modern poetry was established in his class, although the word modern has changed much in meaning during my life span. 

            My senior year was no more than started, when Dean Townsend sent for me one day and said, “Why, Ruth Rucker, you have never even taken your Freshman course in chemistry.”  I tried to explain to him how I was a senior in the Academy that year, but nothing would do him but that I must drop one English course I was registered for and take chemistry so that I would graduate that year.  Little did he know what a horror science was to me.  My teacher gave ten questions on every exam, seven of them were on the textbook and three were originals.  I made a straight 70 on his exams - never even attempted an original.  Luckily, Dickie Adams, one of my best friends, was an art major, and my notebook in chemistry was filled with beautiful drawings of things I was supposed to have seen when I looked into the microscope. 

            Miss Edith Roper taught me trig.  On the outside of my midterm exam, together with a grade of 20, was written her admonition:  “Miss Rucker, it seems you are failing the course.”  Well, I never had failed one and so I dropped Choral Club and Debate the rest of that year memorized the trig book.  Luckily, Miss Roper did not change an wording in the final she gave or I would never have made the 100.  This time she wrote:  “Miss Rucker, you have a real mathematical brain.  I’d like to see you major in math.”  I tell these two tales about math and science to explain the 2 C’s on my undergraduate record.  Luckily, Mama had never put me under any pressure to make specific grades - only to pass. 

            The last point in my list concerned the wonderful associations that were found in Baylor.  I do not have time to catalog all of them, besides, they do not really belong in this book, but they were numerous and invaluable to me.  I will mention only a few.  First came Dickie Adams who was my best pal.  So little was she that she could walk under my outraised arm.  We were the Mutt and Jeff of the campus.  Corinne Vercer, my senior roommate, Georgia Westbrook, Martha Hardy and oh so many more!  I was elected Senior Class President in absentia.  I received a wire from Georgia stating:  “Ruth Rucker will be our Senior Class President.”  The one from Martha read:  “Proud of our Senior Class President.  Glad she is my Academia sister.”  Memories of how we took Miss Osee Maedgen under our wing and taught her the Baylor traditions.  She was our special property, since she had come to Baylor to marry our Mr. Vann.  And Olyvya Long!  We suffered together through almost every play that Miss Walters and Miss Lattimer gave for four years.  We spent the night before graduation recounting tales of them and of our undying friendship as we sat on a patchwork quilt made by my mother on a spot on “Old Baylor’s dear soil” behind Alma Reeves chapel. 

            Reluctantly, I pass on from my college life.  All the reminders of this will have to be told in much less detail because it is not closely related to the National Hotel. 

            I am going to skip several very eventful years to tell a few things about the four summers I went to Northwestern University.  Mama was still living at the National Hotel.  Brother’s children were growing to maturity under her guidance, and Sister and her girls were married to Archie Smith and living in several different places.  Need I say that Mama strongly encouraged me to go to school further.  I looked into the various schools that offered a Master’s Degree in Speech and Drama and found that there were only five in the United States that did at that time - none of which were in Texas.  Besides, Chicago did not seem so very far away and Northwestern was an excellent school.  So I went up - really on an exploratory trip to see if I could afford to go there. 

            I was really the country girl gone to town when I arrived in Chicago, after traveling day and night for 48 hours on a bus from Waco.  I checked my bags in the station and went out to find my way out to Evanston via the elevated train.  I’ll not tell much about the first day except to say that I tramped all day long and could not fine a place that was not too expensive.  So, in desperation. I returned to 1838 Chicago Avenue, just across the street from the main campus at Northwestern University.  The nice lady who ran the place was a Tennesseean and had asked me to come back and spend the night as her guest if I had not found a room; I had to report that I could not afford any which I had found. 

            When I knocked on her door, she met me cheerfully and said:  “Come in, my dear.  I thought of something after you left this morning that might suit you.  I’d so love to have you.  Then she took my upstairs.  The house had originally been intended for a three-story house, but the third floor had never been completed.  She preceded me up the second winding stairs that led to the incomplete third floor.  There, in one corner, was a bed, chest of drawers, and a drop light.  Adjoining was a shower and a commode - nothing more. “In the winter I give this room to the boy who maintains my furnace and keeps my yard.  No one has every stayed up here in the summer, but I guess you won’t mind the heat, since you’re from Texas.  I can rent this to you for $10.00 a week - if you want it.  Stay awhile and think it over.  I must go put the blueberry muffins in the stove for our supper.” 

            What more could I have asked for?  I had a comfortable place to sleep, a good light, a place to bathe, privacy to eat some meals direct from the grocery store and all the rafters and cobwebs and dormer windows one could have desired to practice my speeches on.  One wonderful thing about the location was that it was only five blacks from downtown Evanston.  I could walk to the weekly speech luncheons at the Orrington Hotel where I developed friendships with Lew Sarett, Carl Sandburg and Edgar Bergen.  I could buy a pretty fair lunch at Woolworth’s for 15 cents and thereby save more money for my weekly trip to the city to hear Cab Calloway or Sophie Tucker or to see Sally Rand or John Barrymore.  I fell in love with my garret and was able to stay there all four summers I attended Northwestern. 

            I shall relate only a few happenings from the list of 15 or more I have made out.  Isn’t it strange that we know more about ourselves than we remember about others.  That little nugget of wisdom makes me wonder whether I was right when I wrote down the guiding principle of my life about 18 pages ago.  The first incident happened the day after I had gone into Chicago and brought back my possessions which I had to take up the little winding steps one at a time. 

            I was one of the first students admitted to Dean Dennis’ office after 8:00 a.m. and the very last one to leave - finally - about 6:00 p.m.  Not that I spent the entire day talking to him, but that I was the most persistent.  We were discussing the status of my degree from Baylor College in Belton, Texas.  His argument was that Baylor was not a member of the American Association of Colleges, and that I would have to take 60 semester hours in Northwestern to prove my degree.  Mine, on the other hand, was that Baylor was a member of the Southern Association for geographic reasons and that in one summer’s work at Northwestern I would be able to demonstrate whether I could do their work.  (In that way I would be able to get my Master’s in four summers.)  I think he finally gave up in desperation because it was almost six o’clock in the afternoon when he said: 

            “Miss Rucker, I have never had a student to be so persistent.  Here is what I have decided.  Take the three courses which I have registered you for this summer semester, and if you make an A in all three of them, I will admit you as a candidate for a Master’s Degree next summer.” 

            My reply was:  Dean Dennis, will you put that in writing at the bottom of my transcript, please.” 

            “Oh, you don’t trust me,” he ejaculated. 

            “No sir,” I replied.  “It has taken me too long to convince you this time.  I don’t want to have to do it again.”  So you can imagine that the days had to stretch to have more than 24 hours in them for me to study hard enough to make those three A’s.  Little did he know of the indomitable spirit which I had inherited from Minnie Rucker - the spirit that had led a woman recently widowed by the inadvertent killing of her husband by her father to go into a business that a woman just did not enter then - and with no word of blame for her father.  To make a success of that business and to make a respected place for herself, for her children, and for her grandchildren in a small town hotel was her ambition. 

            The other incident dealt with my oral exam, the finale of my work at the end of summer number four.  Dr. Cunningham, my wonderful adviser, and I had studied and drilled over all the work I had taken at Northwestern.  There was a board composed of four PH.D’s with Dean Dennis as chairman.  I was somewhat dejected that the two men from outside the Speech Department were  from the History Department instead of being English teachers.   I had had only the required courses in history, about 12 years before, while I had had all the English courses Dr. Vann taught and I had been teaching high school English myself for several years.  But my thesis subject had seemed to indicate that history was my second subject; it was Woodrow Wilson’s Concept of American Principles as Expressed in His Speeches, so I was given two history men. 

            Dr. Cunningham warned me about Dean Dennis’ usual attitude:  “Why, he’ll be just as nice as peaches and cream, but look out.  He is sure to spring something on you when you least expect it.”  I have always been glad that I was somewhat prepared for his question. 

            Well, we had had a very pleasant little conversation - the four men and I.  One of the history men had asked me something about Patrick Henry which I was able to handle, as he had play a prominent part in The History and Literature of American Oratory, a speech course which I had taken the preceding summer.  Then, there came a question on Lincoln which I had not been able to handle quite so successfully because it dealt with history completely.  Things were quiet for a minute; then Dean Dennis leaned forward across the table.  “This is it,” I reflected. 

            “Miss Rucker, what is your opinion of the Freudian principles?  “I thought hard for a minute.  Then I somehow managed to come up with the following answer: 

            “You threw me there for a minute, Dean.  In the first place, down in Texas we say Frood not Froid; and in the second place, I’d rather discuss them with you on some moonlit night without the presence of all these witnesses.” 

            Well, that brought the house down.  Those men did more than laugh.  They guffawed.  And Dr. Cunningham had to wipe his glasses.  The Dean asked me to step out in the hall for a minute, and a few seconds later they called me back in and shook hands with me in congratulation and said that they had each one signed his name in approval on my thesis.  Less than one hour spent on my orals which usually took three hours! 

            After I was sure that the exams were over and all the men had signed my thesis, my mind turned to the Dixie Dinner in downtown Chicago to which I had been invited for that day.  I had not accepted on account of the exam, but I was ready to go somewhere to celebrate.  So I hired a cab to take me to the El and went in past the sordid slums and the brave little geranium plants on fire escapes to the hotel where the dinner was to be held on the roof garden.  I got off the elevator and the first person I saw was Dean Dennis. 

            “Why, Miss Rucker, what are you doing here?” he asked me. 

            “Where else would a Texas gal go to celebrate passing her oral?” I responded. 

            “If you had told me you were coming, you could have ridden down with me.  I was invited to this dinner, also, because I was born in Kentucky.” 

            Nothing would do him but an extra chair should be brought and placed at the head table next to him, for I found that he was to be M.C. at the dinner.  He introduced me to the entire group and told the story about how I confounded the four PH.D.’s that very morning and passed my orals in record time.  Quite a celebration! 

            I’m going to leave all the details of my marriage out of this book.  They really have no place in it - save for one thing that Mama wrote her niece, Vance, in a letter which Vance gave to me after Mama’s death. 

            “My baby girl, Ruth has gone to Washington to live with her new husband.  It nearly killed me to give Ruth up, but I could not deny her this little bit of happiness when she had been so good to me.” 

            And I was happy - for an all too short time.  Lem was a free soul.  He could not stand to be fettered.  The trauma of Jean’s birth and my subsequent illness coupled with the lack of money and his honest efforts to be a good husband - plus his absolute inability to cope with it all  contributed to my decision to come back to Texas with my little daughter where we could begin life over again.  I have no word of blame for Lem, only a vast loneliness for his dearness, his companionship and a deep sense of anguished regret for Jean’s never seeing him or knowing him.  I think she would have understood. 

            I have mentioned Mama’s wandering foot previously.  I think it must have been inherited by her peripatetic daughter.  It must have been the gypsy in me that made me long to journey to specific places, to others not so exact, and just to ramble anywhere.  The man who invented guide books was my best friend.  I have numberless ones on file.  The scrapbooks of all the trips I’ve taken fill the shelves in my big walk-in closet. 

            I used to lie awake in my little bed at the hotel in Franklin and listen to the I and GN trains passing through on the way to somewhere different and entrancing.  There was one which came through about 4:30 every morning that had a particularly lonesome yet inviting whistle as it rolled on and on to some faraway place.  The sound of its wheels seemed to hum over and over the words of a song we sang in school that day. 

“Oh beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties,
Above the fruited plain.” 

            As much as time and money would permit, I have followed the call of those turning wheels - followed to most of the states in America, to Canada, Alaska, the Caribbean.  Hawaii and Mexico.  I’ve been to most of the capitals of Europe, the Orient, Japan and China, Australia, the Fiji Islands.  I’ve lived in the towns of Franklin, Belton, Elgin, Calvert, Bryan, Tyler, Temple, Wharton, Houston; in the States of Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma, California and Washington.  I’ve traveled by car, by bus, train sea and air.  The rolling waves on Hawaii 5-0 every week make me want to go to hundreds more.  As my travel buddy, Oleane White, says:  “You don’t have to say where to me; just say when?” 

            I still have the same spirit and desires about traveling; its “clarion call” still comes clear, but conditions now seem to forbid my answering it affirmatively.  I had planned to travel extensively when I retired.  But alas for “the best laid plans o’ mice and men”, this plagued arthritis and general malaise of 76 years now interfere somewhat.  I sit and look back through my old scrapbooks, attempt to put a few feelings down on paper, and go across to The World Wide Health Studio in an earnest attempt to improve both plights so that I may get back to my former intentions. 

            Often, I am reminded of the summer that Mama went with me on the bus to Chicago, and I got to share with her some of the wonders of the city I had come to love.  At the age of 60, Mama had lost none of her enthusiasm for travel. 

            I may not have communicated to you how great is my true itinerant nature.  One has to possess it himself before he can understand it in others.  Like the two French sailors Jean and I walked behind one night in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.  They were trying to pick up a couple of Danish girls.  The had tried in several languages, but to no avail.  Finally one of them said in English:  “Hello Baby, would you like to see some of the sights of the carnival with us?”  To which one of the Danish girls replied:  “Oh, boy, would we?”  And after communication had been established, they walked away laughing, in couples, to see the acrobats. 

            My retirement in 1972 marked the end of 45 years of teaching.  Now I get quite a nice retirement income plus social security as well.  I am not going to write anything about this, the main part of my life, since it is not directly related to my life in the National Hotel.  But I will say that I do consider teaching as one of the most valuable and rewarding professions in the world.  I have touched the lives of many students who have gone on and into every branch of society and like Alexander Pope’s character, I am glad that many of them have surpassed the teacher. 

            As I try to close this section, I look back over my life to find the prevailing characteristic.  Perhaps you might not agree, but I believe it is my interest in Speech and Drama. 

            From the time we were little children, we had put on plays of our own composing in Room No. 17, at the end of the front and back porches.  The was our sample room.  It contained only long tables which could, in a pinch, be used for stage elevations or even for audience seats.  We charged 10 pins for admission.  I was always the combination author, director and general flunkey for the productions. 

            As I said, this room was ordinarily used for a sample room.  The drummers would bring the things they had for sale in big packing boxes which Robert would carry across the street from the depot for many a 25 cent tip.  Maybe that was the reason he felt so at ease and was the champion actor in our company.  Here they would display their wares and bring in merchants from Franklin and nearby communities to see them.  Now, in 1981, they have things in a truck and just go by each store for 15 or 20 minutes and then on to some big city for the night.  Hotel business in a small town is not what it used to be. 

            Once a year a traveling company of actors came to Franklin with a tent show.  This was the most exciting time of year for me.  The members of the cast all stayed at the hotel, and you cannot imagine the thrill of seeing an actor play a demanding love role on the stage the night before, and then finding out that he wants soft boiled eggs to eat for breakfast the next morning.  It was strange how many girls in Franklin decided that Ruth was one of their best friends and came down to see me, of course on the off chance that they would see a glamorous star or heroine. 

            At the tent, their show always had three acts.  And between acts they would sell popcorn and peanuts and bottled pop.  They usually played old-fashioned melodramas or westerns.  I heard them talk shop at the hotel, I became more and more interested.  I was a favorite with them and they were amazed with the amount of poetry I could quote. 

            I can fully credit my decision to major in Speech to Miss Katherine Hurt of the Hurt School of Expression in Dallas whose slogan was The Hurt School, But It Don’t.  She came to Franklin and gave a recital at the Methodist Church.  She stayed at the hotel and I had several private talks with her.  One of the numbers on her repertoire was Amy Lowell’s Patterns.  It was the most beautiful, rhythmic and sensuous poem I had ever heard and I took a solemn vow then that I would learn to read that poem as well as Miss Hurt did.  I don’t think I ever succeeded, but after majoring in Speech and Drama for both my B.A. and M.A. degrees, and after teaching other students to speak for 45 years, I at least have tried. 

            Miss Ivy Hathaway taught us private expression lessons in Franklin and we put on plays and gave concerts.  Once we even did a musical play The Stars and Stripes Forever, featuring Cicero McPhail.  “Uncle Sam Stands With Flag Unfurled Before The Eyes of the World.”  I remember that Mildred said, Under the Buggy Seat.  My favorite was Ring for Liberty.  Miss Ivy taught in the Carnegie Library building.  Chautauquas were a favorite form of entertainment lasting for two or three days.  There would be a variety of imported talent, some singers, musicians, lecturers.  We also had a Lyceum series of four or five numbers per year.  Both of these performed in the library building.  The artists always stayed at the hotel, so I got a double exposure to them.  The courthouse was on the way to school, and I’m afraid that I frequently cut classes to listen to trials and to my favorite lawyer’s speeches.  Oh, speech was always in my background! 

            In most of the plays I was in at college, I had to play the part of a man, because I went to an all girls school and was tall and adaptable vocally.  We produced The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, A Night at an Inn and others too numerous to mention.  I was in two or three major productions each year and on numerous programs for various clubs and organizations.  When I started teaching I always directed three or four plays every year.  I have been cast in various shows in Tyler, Temple, Wharton and once I was in a play at the Alley Theatre in Houston.  The play was Jewel Gibson’s Joshua Beene and God.  How much she has enriched my life.  Don’t ask me how I came in from Wharton every night for rehearsals and performances for several weeks.  But it was great. 

            I usually produced rather old standard plays such as I Remember Mama, The Rainmaker, The Rocking Chair, White Iris, Our Town, and The Man Who Came To Dinner.  I felt that it was better for my students to be in really good plays even if they were old ones that to be in trashy ones; also, the royalties were not so high as on newer plays.  I have found that plays give you wonderful relief from the every day trials of life.  Each play is a challenge and a very wholesome pursuit for any number of students.  I always felt that Mama understood my problems, motives and desires in putting on a play.  They were the same ones she had tried to give me all of my life:  “Give it all you’ve got, Ruthie; all your abilities, talents and enthusiasms.  Then you have won success with each production.” 

            A play “holds the mirror up to nature” in the words of Shakespeare.  I loved the plays we gave.  It was my theory, always, to bring good entertainment to the towns where I taught.  I was interested in putting on a good show as well as in giving training to the students.  So I have always tried to spread my influence to both areas - behind the floodlights and in front of the footlights, remembering the old adage: 

The show must go on!                   

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