Texas
Welcome!
County Coordinator is Jane Keppler.County Co-Coordinator is Jean Huot Smoorenburg
If you have any questions or would like to submit information for Robertson County, please email
one of the above.
We do not live in Robertson County so we cannot do research.
|
||
| site search by freefind |
|
TXGenWeb Robertson County Books & Master's Theses |
|
T H E N A T I O N A L H O T E L |
|
|
By Ruth Rucker
Lemming
1982,
Eakin Publishers
|
Used with permission of Jean Willette Lemming Chaney, Ruth Rucker Lemming's daughter. These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format by other organizations or individuals. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the written consent of Jean Willette Lemming Chaney or contact Jane Keppler , Robertson County TXGenWeb coordinator. This book
was lovingly typed by volunteer Jo Ella Snider Parker, |
|
Chapter V "I'm off to
see -- " -- Judy Garland It is quite fitting that this chapter should be numbered Five because Mama had five grandchildren, although her great heart was full of love for all children. She had much influence, too, on several of her great-grandchildren; but it was on these five that the National Hotel (through its owner, Mrs. Minnie Rucker) exerted the greatest influence. They were as nearly her own as grandchildren could ever be. The oldest four of them lived the early part of their lives in Franklin, under the influence of the National Hotel through good times and bad. They lived an average life, albeit an un-average one. A life almost devoid of men. It was a truly matriarchal society, one dominated by Mama and her ideas. Only occasionally was Brother around; he betook himself outside the cocoon. Just one small boy, Robert, plagued and bantered the girls unmercifully - his sister Minnie being his special tease and love - even when he called her “Minnie Marie” after a girl who was not quite “all there.” Some hotel guests were influential; occasional relatives and friends passed through their lives; but fundamentally, they lived in a state of Mon-ism. We have all been governed by this double implementation of a life in which women were forced to be the breadwinners, the workers, the independents, the decision makers, the doers. My sister, Jimmie, had two girls: Constance and Frances; they came to the National Hotel to live, even before the birth of Frances. As often as not, Constance was known as Connie and Frances was known as Bucky. Connie was jolly, ladylike, well behaved. Her childish name for her sister was Bucky. I remember a picture we took on the front porch. Connie was sitting decorously quiet with the ribbon tied in flat bows on her crocheted cap so carefully made by Sister’s every busy hands. But not Frances. She was sitting astride the banisters with her cap awry and with a piquant expression on her face. The same look with which she asked a drummer: “Have you got a nickel, just a itty-bitty nickel?” and when the victim had replied favorably she countered: “Connie and Robert and Minnie want one too.” Thus was born her lifelong habit of looking after those she loved. Connie’s arrival on this planet was awaited as eagerly in Texas as in West Virginia. One May morning, Mama received a telegram signed “Frank” and reading “Greetings to Grandmother, a girl.” Mama took her cane, grabbed her shawl, jerked her head high and walked up and down the streets of Franklin, showing off the wire and proudly telling everyone ”Jimmie had a girl!” When she went to West Virginia to visit the Garretts, she was very happy to be with her first-born grandchild and she was more than happy - although she worried considerably about Frank - when they came to Texas to live. She opened her heart and the National Hotel to them, particularly to Connie, although I cannot really say that Mama had a favorite. Each child had his or her own place - even to the special niche occupied by my daughter, Jean, after Mama was no longer in the hotel. But its influence flourished as long as she lived, and it flowered in all of us - even long after she was gone. But I started (before my usual habit of rambling on broke in) to write about Mama’s grandchildren in some semblance of order; so here goes. Everyone liked Connie from childhood to maturity. She was a happy, outgoing child, with her father’s disposition, even though his looks were inherited by Frances. She often sat on the fence which encircled the hotel yard and waved to the train men as they passed. They all knew her and enthusiastically waved back at the friendly little lady. The children played on the street going to the post office, and one day Connie, who was just about four, came home without her sweater. Sister directed her to go back to look for it. Connie was afraid to go after dark and complained: “Those old boys will throw rocks at me.” Frances stepped into the breach, “Come on , Sister. I’ll go with you and I’ll cock ’em down.” We children often played in No. 17, a big room at the end of the porch where the drummers laid out their samples; we would arrange a screen and pull a blanket or sheet, sometimes a towsack, for the curtain. I was always the combined author-director and Robert had to take all the male roles. One of our favorites was The Sleeping Beauty, with Connie as the beauty and Robert as Prince Charming. He awakened her with a kiss, a resounding smack, which was just as often a bite or a smothered giggle. The admission to these dramatic efforts was ten pins, as I have said before. The children played numerous games. Sometimes I played with them, but as often as not, I was somewhere “sucking a book” as Mama put it, because that was the thing I loved most. One of their favorite games was Jacks, making up new and strange versions as time went on. I still remember the pandemonium that occurred the day Connie crawled over the floor in search of a runaway Jack. She found it all right - by sticking one of the prongs into her knee. We were all too scared to be punished. There was a streetlight in the corner of the hotel yard, so at night they would all four play with the Andrews children from across the street. One of their preferred games was “Wolf Over the River”; another was “Statues”; and sometimes they would be so bold as to play “Annie Over” and throw a ball clear over the hotel. Connie was the ringleader in those games. Sister and her children always had the room behind the parlor. The children thought it was heavenly to have their own private telephone hanging on the wall. They did not realize that the telephone company for which Jimmie worked required it. The phone in the little booth in the lobby of the hotel might be busy when they needed to call her. In this room they were a family. Connie says that Jimmie would know what they were doing or saying - even with her back turned to them as she stood at the ironing board or sat at the sewing machine. But the room was full of love and shared confidences. Connie remembers sleeping in the bed with her mother the very first Christmas Eve that she knew there was no Santa Claus. Of course, I had been the official Santa Claus - never really being a child again after they had come to live with us. There was a feeling of camaraderie, an innate sense of togetherness and an aura of happiness emanating from their room This was a feeling which I coveted. After they moved to the apartment at Miss Ella’s and then to the house near the standpipe, the girls would come down to the hotel and work. Mama always had to have someone to wait on the tables, and Connie and Frances certainly knew the business. Beside, there was usually some leftover chicken or a pot of soup that Mama could send home by the girls even though actual cash was mighty scarce. So Connie had learned at an early age to manipulate and manage despite hardships. During the war years, everyone had a special task to do. Connie still remembers that hers was to watch the sugar bowls to see that no one took away any extra sugar. Too bad that was before the day of individual packets doled out by the waitress. This task Connie managed to do - just the way she has always managed throughout her life. She seems to have an innate ability to continue to find a way out of difficult situations. So, even during the times Sister was in Baylor, and for the years she was married and living in other places with Mr. Smith, and even after Connie herself was married, the National Hotel was there exerting its influence and molding their lives. Who would get away from his roots? Sister idolized Connie, who could do no wrong. One of the chief reasons for their rapport was that Connie played the piano on all occasions. She learned to play “Napoleon’s Last Charge”, “Tiger Rag”, and numerous World War I Songs by simply listening to her mother play them. She would often sit on the floor with her ear up against the sounding board, listening. Later in life, she played them without ever having seen the music. Jimmie’s fantasy was for her oldest daughter to become a professional musician. She embodied all the dreams Jimmie had once had for herself. Connie had no teacher save her mother and in a few years, she was going to be ready for the concert stage. She was taught classical music from the outset; but what that girl could do for Jazz! We still love for her to play, for she can make a piano talk! But alas for the “Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men;” and also for those crazy mixed up glands. Connie reached maturity quickly. She was a leader in school, was always the center of the crowd and much in demand for music and dancing. But she decided she preferred life with Sylman Galloway when she fell in love with him while they were still Seniors in high school. They eloped all the way to Brother Wallace’s house - where he united them in the hold bonds of matrimony. Consequently, Sister crammed her dreams into her pocket and set about washing diapers and helping feed hungry children. They all lived together in the little house by the standpipe. Although Sylman was very smart, he had no training for good jobs, beside it was depression times, and none were available. So for several years Jimmie had to run up bills to feed and clothe the children; and she never got out of the habit. Even for years after Connie and Sylman had moved their little family to Skidmore where Sylman had secured a job with his brother, she was still paying out those bills at $5.00 per month. She saved dimes to buy the material for graduation dresses for JoAn and Sylvia and Jeannie even after they had moved to Webster. Her salary at the telephone office was never more than a pittance, but it was supplemented somewhat with money for private music lessons - which were always her pleasure. A real emergency occurred when Connie had to go to the hospital in Marlin for a serious operation. Sister and Mama kept the children and it was quite a task. Sister kept the girls up at her home and let them come down, occasionally, to the hotel. Neither of them was accustomed to taking care of such a rambunctious bunch of children. But the care of the baby, Robert Sylman or Bobbie, was left to Mama. One day she was just sure that he had swallowed a penny because one disappeared from the table near his crib. (Too bad that he hasn’t clutched all pennies as tightly ever since.) Jimmie and the other children were definitely put on the alert to look carefully for the penny through all his stools for several days afterwards. But, alas! it was never found. So Bobby may still have the penny somewhere in his system and the National Hotel may have exerted a stronger influence on his life than he realizes. Well, “a penny saved is a penny earned.” Mama wrote in a letter to her niece Vance: “I took the dear little baby with fear and trembling. I asked God’s guidance and I feel that he answered my prayers and directed me to the right food and care. Oh, when his Mother came home from the hospital, the baby looked wonderful. She hardly knew him.” JoAn was 51/2, Sylvia was 41/2; Jeannie was 21/2; and Bobby was just a baby, but Mammy and MomMom (the children’s pet names) were a force in their lives. Jeannie says that MomMom’s hair turned white overnight. The next morning she marched the three girls down to Porter McCoy’s Barber shop and had their hair cut off. It was simply too much trouble to care for. They looked like little boys, and Connie cried when she saw them. Sylvia remembers the location of the family rooms, particularly the bathrooms. One of those early days Mama put her on the pot to do her business, but she did not come back to take her off quickly enough to suit Sylvia. Mammy, her great-grandmother called out: “Sit still, honey. Mammy will be there in a minute”, to which Sylvia responded: “Well come on, you old Jackass,” Mama was so tickled that she leaned up against the door facing and laughed heartily. She regaled me with this story when I came home from school. Sylvia also remembers the beautiful, wonderful, ravishing hats that Robert made for their dolls, hats made of cardboard covered with cloth. How they treasured those hats; and the lesson they taught the little girls was that if you want to make something bad enough, you can always find suitable material. Mammy had taught them to “make do” with what they had. JoAn and Jeannie have faint memories of the hotel. JoAn was fascinated to watch Mama put her hair up on white kid curlers at night. She knows that Mammy was always there - her very heartbeat the pulse of the National Hotel. The children were never allowed to go upstairs. That was forbidden territory. However, they could go up as far as the first landing and this was their favorite haunt in the house, rivaling even the stoop back of the kitchen where the kitchen help sat to snap beans. Once, JoAn had the inestimable privilege of going upstairs with me, Aunt Ruth, to clean up a room. Her eyes bugged out at the wonderland of a forbidden place to a child. Once, when Connie and Sylman lived in Skidmore, Sister (after almost having a nervous breakdown) went to visit them. Life was not easy for the Galloways. They had a hard row to hoe. But, as always, Connie managed to manipulate conditions happily. They went to baseball games, on picnics, and fishing trips, as those things were Sylman’s favorite recreations. The three adults, four children and Queenie, the dog, all piled in their little car and went on their joyous way. Connie and Sister had learned the lesson well from Mama to be content in “whatever state” they found themselves. Sister went back to Franklin with renewed vigor and strength. So the National Hotel had much weight in the early lives of Connie’s children but not the same hold that it had on their mother and Aunt Frances. Those two who were so alike and yet so different. They were sisters and they grew up under the same environment; one would have expected them to resemble each other more. Looking back from the pinnacle of more than sixty years, they seem more alike now, yet in reality, they are not. Life does strange things to people in its changes and developments. They do not always turn out the way they seem headed as children, but are made over by strange patterns. Yet life goes on, and as they were in childhood, so they are in adulthood (molded and changed however by life’s fortunes and misfortunes.) The “Wizard” of Nursing - With Emphasis on Frances Payne Garrett Williams, Called Frances Frances has a few scattering memories of her early life, of Mama and the hotel. One of her earliest recollections was of Mama’s little old tin bath tub, enameled inside and out and sitting up bravely on its spindly legs. Her first memory of living was of her Mother in Mammy’s car, old Studey, with its four little jump seats and its isinglass windows in the top which was raised only when it rained. So her childish memories were of actual articles - and antique ones at that. After supper in the summer, we would all sit out on the front gallery of the hotel. Frances’ lifelong interest in gardening and antiques and beauty is demonstrated in her early interest in things around the National Hotel, particularly the long surrounding porch with banisters, railings with posts in between - and big oak trees towering just beyond. There were rows of rose bushes growing down the fence. Marshall Neil rose bushes trailing up the back porch were covered most the year with beautiful golden roses. All five of Mama’s grandchildren inherited her love for flowers. It was ingrained into them, although Robert is the only one who followed horticulture professionally. Frances has specialized in gardening and is never happier than when she is working in her own or in Connie’s garden. Connie runs her a close second and has turned her special abilities to flower arranging. Minnie has lovely house plants and beautiful outside beds, and Jean has the magic to make flowers grow. Frances still remembers the ornamental iron fence around the yard of the old hotel, the dozens of little lacy ferns, the quaint old building with bay windows in front - all a part of her childhood. They sat in these windows playing their favorite indoor game, Flinch. But Robert always cheated, and their game ended with cards flying in the air. When the new Baptist Church was being built, they had Sunday School temporarily in Mitchell Brothers’ Bank Building. The children had gotten the habit of going there every Sunday morning. One Sunday, long after the congregation had moved to the new church building, Connie and Frances did not come home after Sunday School. The entire family went all over town looking for them. Morgan finally found them about mid-afternoon sitting on the steps of the Mitchell building. Frances looked up tearfully and said plaintively, “Connie and me came to Sunday School, but nobody else ever did come.” Frances felt that if she could ever say after some misdeed, “Connie did it, too,” that things were O.K. All the children were crazy about their Aunt Ruth. They hated for me to go away to college, and it was a red letter day when I’d come home with my choice presents for them. I was just enough older that they all respected me and loved me dearly. Witness the three pictures of me in antique frames on the walls of Frances’ lovely new home in Houston. Through the years I have always been welcome to any of their homes, and my apartment is full of mementoes which they have brought me from everywhere. The children’s love for me has been one of the features of my life for which I have been the most grateful. They have enriched my life and have made me very happy. Robert and Minnie had the measles when they were children. They had to stay in a darkened room and were not able to use their eyes. Mama told Frances to sit with them and to read them anything they wanted. Robert was an inveterate tyrant and he made her read every word of the Dave Fearless series - to which Minnie listened also, but except for taking up the time, it is doubtful that she enjoyed Dave’s adventures any more than Frances did. Frances wished that she’d have the measles too and the mumps and whooping cough. She envied their special privileges when Minnie and Robert were sick. But she never did have the diseases and neither did her Aunt Ruth. The only time Frances ever remembers being sick was when she was all of four years old. She got to sleep in her mother’s bed, and Morgan brought her in “mater soup” and oranges. Oh, being sick brought its own rewards! Not often did the child see a doctor. Once Dr. Curry was called for her, and she was enthralled when he took out his gold watch to count her pulse. I don’t know who came the nearer to fainting - Mama or Frances - when Dr. Curry blew his nose on her sheet. Probably Frances because she had always been clean to a fault and she has a proclivity for fainting. She fainted dead away when she was vaccinated; she lost consciousness at the picture show seeing the adventures of Clara Bow; and she fainted several times while she was in nurses’ training. During World War I, Aunt Ruth and her best friend, Mildred Beall, would sing “The Yanks Are Coming.” Frances would be terrified. She had no idea who The Yanks were nor when the confrontation would take place; but when the singers would get to “The drums rum-tum-ing everywhere”, Frances would shrink in horror and hide under the bed. When she was a child, Frances usually had a solution to every problem. Once after Mama and the three Rucker children had returned from Gainesville, there seemed no solution to their perplexities. The children fussed and fought all the time. Usually Connie and Frances teamed up and Minnie and Robert were allied; I served as moderator. Finally, Frances came up with the ultimate solution: “Mammy, you put your children in the back ’ard and Mama can put her children in the front ’ard”. She really needed an explanation, though, the time the squirrel bit firmly into Minnie’s finger while it was being transferred from box to cage. It’s a thousand wonders that she didn’t have rabies. When they lived in Marshall, Sister worked and went to school. Frances often swung in a peach tree while waiting for her mother to come home. She loved the sweetgum and persimmon trees and ate of the fruit of the black walnut tree. She and Connie often sang little duets, in particular one that Mama had taught them at the National Hotel.
“Oh, Lord, don’t you
remember Daniel in the Lions’ den? Miss Axtell stayed at the hotel all one summer with her nephew, Dick; she organized a class in china painting. Frances was more than thrilled to be allowed in her class. That was her first attempt at painting and she loved it. For more than a decade, Frances gave most of her spare time to painting. It was artistic - a natural for her. If she had devoted her full energies to painting, she might have become a real artist. But when she gave it up, she no longer had any interest in it whatsoever, and turned to other pursuits. Frances loved intensely as a child; she did not love widely. She did not have the genial “I love everyone” attitude that Connie had. She “loved not wisely but too well.” as the poet put it. She had a passion for small things, particularly small animals. Once a jolly carefree group of young men came to the hotel and stayed for a week advertising Calumet Baking Powder. These boys had three dogs - a big one that was called “Calumet” and two little puppies named “Sooner” and “Later.” It was love at first sight on Frances’ part. They were the idols of her eye and she played with them incessantly. But Fate willed other than perpetual happiness for them. One day little Sooner was run over in the street by a passing car and was killed. Frances was inconsolable. She cried her heart out and then disappeared. The entire family searched for her for hours. Finally, they found her fast asleep under her mother’s bed where she had crawled away to lick her wounds. Connie and Frances had both always loved their Uncle Bob. He was a hero to them and they loved anything he gave them. Once he brought in a little pig to Mammy to eat up the hotel slop. This little pig became Frances’ especial care, and she spent long hours leaning over his fence and whispering sweet nothings to the little piggy. By fall, he had become a big hog and was ready to be slaughtered. You can imagine the consternation in Frances’ soul and disturbance she raised when he was brought in - roasted - on a big platter with a beatific expression on his face and a round, red apple in his mouth. When they lived in Wheelock, Frances had two pet chickens and a hound dog which she called “Hound Pup.” The chickens liked to sleep in trees, and the child often had the whole family up at night chasing them down and out of her tree house. They, too, soon met the common fate of other feathered friends in the soup pot. She only got to keep Hound Pup a short while for he, too, was killed. It seemed to Frances that everything bad happened to her. She was almost afraid to love anyone or anything for fear something bad would happen to it. She could not accept the truth that everyone else had troubles also, the fact that the vicissitudes of life happen to all of us. No! Troubles have always loomed larger in her own life, and she talked about them so that she almost made others agree with her. It is as if an ominous cloud is hovering over her and her frequent cry is “Why do these things happen to me?” It is hard for her to realize the plain and sober truth that Longfellow expressed:
“Thy fate is the common fate of
all, It seems that Frances had lived not one but four lives: a child, a nurse, a married woman and now, a life alone. Each existence has been dominated by her desire to help others, to be of some use to the world. Albeit her world. After graduation from high school, Frances chose nursing as her vocation, and took her training at the Central Texas Baptist Sanitarium in Waco, Texas. This pleased Mama very much. That night her tongue was loose at both ends. Some of the things I remember that she told me were: “Oh, Ruthie, I cannot tell you how happy I am that Frances has chosen to be a nurse. That is what I have always wanted to be, and I had hoped that one of my daughters would choose the nursing profession.” I replied, “Mama, you hurt my feelings. I could not have been a nurse. The very idea is abhorent. “No dear, I did not mean that I was hurt because you nor Jimmie wanted to be a nurse. But this is the happiest day of my life. I feel that Frances is mine, too, and that my life will now be complete. You know my mother, Sara, was a natural born nurse. She was always ready at the borning or the sickness or the dying of anyone in her community. She would take her little leather pouch containing her Indian knowledge of herbs and simple medications plus her innate desire to be of service to humanity, and she was a welcome visitor in any home where there was sickness.” “Mama, dear, I know you are a fine nurse because you always cared for all of us. I think you know more than most doctors know about doctoring.” (How true my words turned out to be when sixty-five years later my daughter Jean and I still use many of her simple remedies. And we take the words of her little white medical dictionary as the law and the gospel.) Mama wrote in a letter to her niece, Vance: “Frances has chosen for her life’s work the nursing profession. Who can tell where all their lives will lead? I can only hope that each one will honor God in his daily life and be of service to others in the hunger of our hearts.” Frances specialized in obstetrics because (as she said) a new baby was God’s greatest gift to the world. She was never to have a child of her own, but she was to be foster mother to hundreds of newborn children - most of whom made their mothers very happy. One day while she was in training she asked Dr. Dudgeon if he remembered the operation he had performed on her Uncle Bob in Franklin, He replied: “Do I remember it? That was the event of a lifetime. My operating table was the dining table set up on the back porch with a sheet spread over it. The natives were gathered all around - even up in the trees. I’ll never forget when I cut into that man’s abdomen; the corruption and bruised blood gushed as high as the ceiling.” A few years later, Frances came to Tyler to be head of obstetrics in the new Mother Frances Hospital. She arrived in the East Texas city a few days early in order to visit with Mama and me. The formal opening of the hospital was not to be until the following week, but it had a premature baptism of blood; its doors were opened to the victims of the New London school disaster. The call went out over the radio for all available doctors and nurses; a friend drove her to New London immediately where she made some semblance of order out of the chaos as she laid out row after row of little bodies in a vacant store building. After Frances met and loved and married Doyle, he did not want her to work outside their home, so she turned her passions to keeping house and gardening - often working too hard to suit her husband. But she paid up her nurses’ dues each year so that she could turn back to her former love if the occasion demanded. Throughout her married life she strove to be a good wife and to make her home as beautiful and well cared for as possible. She loved Doyle deeply and spoiled him unmercifully. He was a wonderful son to Jimmie, a kind grandson to Mama, a true brother to Connie, and a real pal to me. I always felt very close to Frances and Doyle. Lem loved them. They stood up with us when we got married, and were later made Jean’s god-parents. Frances came to me in Los Angeles after my daughter was born and she has come again and again, even to taking me in the city traffic to the opthalmologist and hospital this year when I had eye surgery. Playing bridge has been her consolation. She is a real master. Also, she can sew more beautifully than anyone I know. During the last few years of Jimmie’s life, Frances devoted her entire ability and energy to her mother. She went to the Nursing Home every day to care for her loved one when neither she nor Connie could look after her any longer in their own houses. Jimmie was the prettiest, the cleanest, the best cared for patient there. Frances and Connie cared for her patiently and gladly. Frances has never gotten over the loss of her mother; and when that loss was followed a few years later by Doyle’s death, she wanted to crawl away somewhere for consolation. She felt that her dark cloud had descended. My niece finds her main solace in her devotion to her family, in her bestowal of favors to them, and in trying to make her home as beautiful and well kept as possible. Frances is a perfectionist. She demands that quality of herself and expects it of others - often to her sorrow! She thinks of Mammy frequently and of how she had to start all over. Frances has the example set before her of tireless work for that which she wants to accomplish, the chief difference being that Frances is almost forty years older than Mama was at her husband’s death and that problems become more difficult for all of us as time goes on. She is indeed a very private person. It is hard for her to open up to people. Whereas her mother knew everyone in Franklin, Frances can count on the fingers of one hand the houses she was ever in back in the old hometown. She had close friends among the boys and girls, but the depth and the warmth of her nature has seldom been shared with others. However, she is very interested in people in her early life. She has many memories of things and of people there; witness the roll of old time members of the Franklin Baptist Church. Witness, also, her deep interest in the high school graduates of 1925 which group I spoke to last year. She spent a night in a motel in Hearne reading aloud every name in the Franklin phone book and recalling many things about the people in Franklin, and her marvelous memory makes them come alive! She treasures most the memories of her family and of the National Hotel. Deep down, Frances is strongly fastened to her roots. She keeps these token among her souvenirs. Life has taught Frances tolerance. She makes more allowances now, for others’ foibles. She takes advice from Connie and from others in her family when making decisions; she tries to comprehend that “No problem” is a good phrase in its way. As she said recently: “Each person has to live his own life and he should do the things he loves to do best. We are all different. We are all individuals.” The Wizard of Loveliness - With Emphasis on Minnie Abbey Rucker Cole, Called Minnie Minnie was a very little girl and Robert was a baby when brother brought them home to Mama and me after the death of their mother, Ruth. Mama accepted them gladly and raised them as if they were her own. They were just the same as my younger brother and sister - even to their last name. Many of the drummers who came to the Hotel regularly thought we were of the same family. None of us ever knew the difference. They are my younger brother and sister. Brother had a soft spot in his heart for Minnie. His nickname for her was “Kooter”, and he was proud of her. He called Robert “Buddy” or “Bud” or “Little Pig.” The nickname “Buddy” stuck and to some of his old-time friends he is still “Buddy Rucker.” But he grew very tired of it and proposed to Mama that he would henceforth call her “Mother” instead of “Mammy.” In return, he was to be called “Robert” his real name. The rest of us followed her lead, as we did in so many things, and also called him “Robert” - sometimes “Bob.” But his sister was called “Little Minnie” all of her young life. You may guess who was called “Big Minnie” or just “Minnie.” It took a while for the two little children to get accustomed to living at the Hotel. Minnie followed Mama around, pulled on her coat tails and begged, “Granny Rucker, soup Minnie.” But she soon shortened this to “Mammy” as she became more vocal. They played with old Sport, their big collie dog, in the swing in the back yard. When their pet died at the age of fifteen, Minnie delivered herself of this oration at his funeral: “Old Sport was given to me when I was a baby, and he was my shadow. He went to school with me every day and then he’d turn around and come home. He was a most intelligent dog. Sport would never bark nor growl at a drummer; but just let anyone else come in this yard and he’d come unglued.” The four played together very well, Frances had been given a squirrel in a little box. All the children worked all day on a cage for it, putting into it every bit of wire and screen they could find. There arrived the moment of its transfer from the box to the cage. Frances told of the event: “As usual the hardest task was put off on me. Well, I reached into the box and grabbed it by the tail. It swung wildly and widely in the air as it tried to get away. In midair it connected with Minnie’s finger and clamped hard with its teeth. Minnie bears the scars to this day.” They all screamed wildly. Morgan came running and literally pried his jaws open, muttering Polish all the time. It’s a thousand wonders the child didn’t have hydrophobia. Minnie grew up working in the hotel. She would go up the street with money clenched tight in her little fist and buy things for the Hotel - even before she started to school. Once she went up to Cousin Jim’s store and bought a dozen pair of shiny rayon socks, tearfully explaining to Mama: “They didn’t cost anything. Imogene just charged ’em.” Mama made her return them, but let her keep three pair. Mama went off mumbling, “That Minnie! Born with a silver spoon in her mouth.” Mama had a wide reputation for the good food served in the hotel, and people would drive for miles and miles just to eat there. As Minnie grew up, she planned the menus and bought the food. She often went to the grocery store in the morning and selected the vegetables to be served at lunch, leaving a list for the ten o’clock delivery, She bought all of Mama’s clothes, ran up the back way to Mr. Scott’s market for special cuts, did all the banking business. Minnie Cole still has the knack of planning good meals and preparing them easily; that ability never was mine. I also could buy food and plan menus, but working with food never came easy to me. I suppose Mama didn’t need me to help as much when I was little. She was older with Minnie and had to leave more of the actual work to her; I could have been found “sucking” a book, as Mama called it, or reading and memorizing poetry or trying my hand at writing. Minnie usually baked four cakes every Saturday to serve with home canned peaches or pears which Mama had put up. Mama paid her twenty-five cents a cake. She learned early to stretch her money and it has paid off, just as cooking skills have stood her in good stead. Even though we always had a maid, any of the family could do things upstairs in a pinch. If someone checked out late, or if a room was needed, as often as not, Minnie went upstairs and cleaned up the room in a jiffy. In fact, she was as efficient in the hotel as she was in school and later a teacher, worker, wife and mother. She went quietly and competently about every task, and the result was perfect. Minnie started to school at age five and one-half. S he had played dominoes, made change, and shopped for the hotel; so school work presented no problem. She was precocious and always made straight A’s. Once when she came home and bragged about making an A in something difficult, Mama muttered: “Humph! That’s no more than I expected.” In fact, she went to school for the first month reading a book propped behind her school book, a book that her teacher, Mrs. Cole (the same first grade teacher who had started us all in school), had told her not to take home. I knew that Minnie considered the spanking given her on her legs a permanent disgrace because I, too, had once received such punishment. When Mama lived in Austin Minnie was in the sixth grade; she had learned all about fractions in just two months after returning to Franklin. In high school, her favorite was Miss Johnnie and she loved everything the lady taught, including history and Latin. She loved all extracurricular activities, particularly debate. Once they went to A&M for a tournament, and Mr. Wilcox (who had stayed at the National Hotel frequently when Minnie was a little girl) was one of her judges; he remarked: “My goodness! Don’t tell me that intelligent young woman is the little girl at the Hotel.” As Morgan said, “I tell you when they made that Minnie, they lost the pattern.” Yes, it was no wonder that Mama wasn’t surprised when her granddaughter was graduated from high school as valedictorian. Minnie was like me in many ways. There was no doubt about our love for each other and about our mutual admiration for each other’s individual accomplishments, but she, after all, was quite different from me. In the first place, she somehow, got by with so many things that I never could. Perhaps Mama was just older, but her attitude toward Minnie was quite different from the attitude that she had had and was always to have toward me. She had mellowed somewhat and Minnie was permitted to do many things that I had never done. She wore rouge and lipstick and high heels earlier; Mama let her date younger; Minnie usually had her own way; she could wind Mama around her little finger. She never lied to Mama, she didn’t have to. If Minnie did it, it was all right. She told me how she got her own way with Mama “Oh, it’s pretty easy, Aunt Ruth. Mammy just can’t stand for me to be left out of things. So I told her a sad tale about everyone in my crowd going to the skating rink except me. I made her think they didn’t ask me because they knew she wouldn’t let me go. This made her quite angry, and even though she hates skating rinks with a purple passion, she said I could go.” Minnie had ready-made dresses earlier than I did. She did not like the homemade ones (as I had not), so she was allowed to buy them. She went to work for cousin Jim Truett in his dry goods store. She also worked for Mr. Elmo Reynolds on Saturdays and was allowed to spend her money as she wished; and you can bet that the majority of it was spent on clothes, makeup, and accessories for herself. As a consequence, she developed early a sense of style and of the value of a dollar, which is still true today. Even as a child, she had been very particular about her clothes. She did not like to wear the same dress twice in a row. Mama always sorted her dresses in a separate stack, and Minnie had to iron them herself. Morgan would often iron them specially for her saying: “You just leave your dirty things here, honey, and I’ll slip in later and wash them out for you.” At the end of the season, Mr. Elmo would give Minnie all sorts of things: novelty tennis shoes, hosiery, purses, shoes, cosmetics, jewelry, pens, pencils, stationery, house shoes. Oh! Her possessions were legion. But Mama made her throw away an all-rubber bathing suit he gave her. Mama was adamant about it, exclaiming: “Why, Minnie Abbey Rucker, I’ll never in the world let you wear a disgraceful thing like that. I’m surprised that Mr. Elmo gave it to you.” A U.S. Rubber Co. representative gave her the first pair of Keds that were ever in Franklin. He told her: Why, Miss Minnie, that will be the best advertisement I could have. You have such pretty little feet.” “I always felt that there was an unusual tie between Minnie and me,” Frances said. There was only two weeks difference in our ages, and we have always been in the same room at school. I loved to go out to the Barnes’ with Minnie. I felt that they were my relatives too. I would go with Aunt Mady in her little buggy. A small box in the back was my special seat. But I’ll tell you something that I did not like - sleeping with Minnie. She always wanted to sleep right under you.” One of Minnie’s favorite stories about Mama was the one about Mattie Frances Pierce, a girl who brought milk and butter to the hotel for sale. Invariably, she would ask in her whiney voice, “Whatcha doin Miz Rucker? Sweeping”? or “cookin”, or “”servin” or “ironin”, or what ever Mama was doing at that point in time. Finally, in desperation, Mama answered, “No Mattie Frances, I’m parching peanuts.” Robert was the bane of Minnie’s existence, He slept on a folding bed in the hall outside his sister’s door and tormented her unmercifully. Once when a girl was spending the night with Minnie, he rigged up a ghost to scare them. He took the breast bone of a turkey and tied a string on it so that it could be pulled up and down seeming to fly through the air. The resultant screams of fright were enough to satisfy him. One summer, a seismograph crew was staying at the hotel. A young man about 21 took a special liking to Minnie, age 14. Mama would not let them go out of the house, so they played dominoes interminably. Finally, on Saturday night (the one night picture show), she did allow them to walk up the street to the show. Later, she sent Robert to the movie with special instructions to watch them and see that they did not hold hands. That was the night that Robert fell asleep on the front row. No one saw him, and Tally Grant, the cinema owner, locked up the show and went home. When Minnie and the young man got home Mama asked: “Where is Robert? Oh, the poor little fellow must be asleep in that building, and it is locked up.” So she telephoned Tally Grant, who had to come down to unlock the building. You may be sure that he shook Robert soundly to awaken him. Minnie and her date had to drag him home. One night, Mama allowed Brother to take Robert and Minnie out to his cousin John Maddox’s home to spend the night on the Navasot. They came back the next morning with wild tales. Robert, wide-eyed, told a real one: “Mammy, five of us kids slept in one bed together; and one of them wet on me.” Minnie added, “And, Mammy, there were bugs running up and down the iron bed posts.” Mama retorted: “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been frantic - My God! Bed bugs!” She quickly stripped the children and put their clothes under the pot in the backyard to burn. Then she put Lysol in the bathtub and scrubbed them both, muttering in the meantime, “It’s my fault. I ought to know better than to let your daddy take you off on some wild goose chase.” All summer long, Minnie had to withstand the boredom of Franklin, One got tired of playing dominoes and Flinch; certainly croquet was no fun with Robert because he cheated; O.K., she could play The Stein Song with Rudy Valley on their old record player. There was no radio or T.V. Nothing to do at night but get into mischief, read, or study. I guess one could sit in the porch swing outside Minnie’s room and sing “Who, stole my heart away?” Ah, how well she remembered the first talking movie she ever attended, Al Jolson in The Singing Fool. That revolutionized going to the movies and Mama often took the whole family. We grew up with a real love for entertainment, fostered by Mama. How we all enjoyed the next few decades of movies - until today’s “little screen” movies have captured our hearts. Only wait long enough and everything comes to T.V.! One Sunday afternoon, two boys from Bryan drove down the streets of Franklin. Minnie was sitting on the front porch of the hotel. As the boys passed by, they tipped their hats. After a few minutes, Martha Steele phoned to ask if Minnie would like to double date with Stuart Cole from Bryan. Minnie, of course, had to ask Mama’s permission. I chimed in with: “Oh, Mama, let her go. It’s just a Sunday afternoon ride.” Mama finally consented, but added: “But don’t you go joy riding all over the country, young lady. You’d better find you a good old boy from Booger County to go with.” This began several years of pleasant dating for Minnie. Stuart was a natural mechanic. He had made an attractive little sports car from parts of wrecked or discarded Studebakers, Fords, and Chevrolets. He called it his “Stuforlay” and it brought much happiness into their lives. During the ’30s, public dances were often held in the old Deckerd Bros. Furniture Store. Many one-night stands were played by leading bands of the day: Wayne King, Henry Busse, Glen Miller and even the incomparable Lawrence Welk. Stuart asked Minnie to go, and Mama acquiesced but delivered her usual words of wisdom: “Now, you stay in there on that dance floor. It’s when you get out in cars that trouble happens.” I came over from Calvert with some friends; it was amusing to be going to a social affair with my little niece. But Robert was the real star of that occasion. He witnessed the dance from the outside, climbed up and looked in at the window. Then, for days afterward, he gave a fashion commentary on the ladies’ dresses. He didn’t miss a detail of style, color, or ornamentation. Stuart got Minnie a place to stay in Bryan with his Aunt Peg and Uncle Elon when she was invited to go to the A&M Ross Volunteers dance with the captain of the band. Minnie described the occasion thus: “That was one of the most memorable events in my life. The cafeteria was decorated like fairyland. And were those R.V.’s ever good looking. I think I sort of looked good myself in my heavenly blue, bugle-beaded, first real party dress, which Robert had bought for me. It cost all of $16.95. And to think it was ready made! Through her years in Baylor College in Belton and teaching in Mumford, Minnie demonstrated her usual mental alertness and good judgment. This reminds me of what Frances said about Robert lately. “He never seemed funny to us girls. We were so exasperated with him. And I don’t see how Minnie could have ever been nice to him; he was such a pest. But I remember when everyone in Franklin saw him in that minstrel and thought he was hilarious. I must admit he was the funniest thing in the show. I am still convulsed when I think of him sitting there in his Mother Hubbard eating the big box of corn flakes, and gesturing with his cook spoon.” But actually, Robert got much more tolerable as he got older. I remember how beautifully he decorated the Baptist Church for Minnie’s wedding to Stuart. It was a veritable garden spot with his handmade picket fences covered with vines from the woods, and everywhere there were baskets of lovely homegrown flowers. Years later, Robert was to decorate elaborate surroundings for impressive weddings, but never was there one more beautiful than his sisters’. The wedding was complete to the last detail - even to the crisp rustling of Mrs. Collier’s silk petticoat. Mama was very proud of Minnie and proud of Robert’s decorations. She felt that in Stuart, she had a new son who would care for Minnie always. Stuart’s Bryan family and friends were conscious that they had acquired a priceless new member of the Cole family. As indeed she has always been, she proved a real daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Cole and she has been more than loyal to all of Stuart’s family and friends. Since Mama’s death we have always considered Minnie’s home to be the half-way house for our family. Minnie has been a real sister to Robert. She helped him financially when he was a student, and she has been very close to him and Freda and their family through the years. Minnie was a very loyal and wonderful daughter to Mama. She has been like another mother to my daughter, Jean. As a mother, she has gone all out and she has been amply repaid by the accomplishments of her daughter, Charlotte. I am so glad that Mama got to live a few years of Charlotte’s life because she adored her. Lem teasingly remarked: “I tell you, honey, those Coles are really slow. Why they have been married for years, but the Lemmings had to give them the idea. And to think that their daughter Charlotte was born just nine months after our own precious Jean!” I’m so glad that Jean and Charlotte were so near the same age, since her first cousins are old enough to be her aunts and uncles. Minnie has always had an unusual capacity for making and keeping friends. Through her work, her clubs, her church, her daughter and Stuart’s family, she is a friend to practically everyone in Bryan. And she keeps their friendship with the same easy sense of informality, graciousness, unselfishness, hospitableness, and competence with which she prepares a meal in her own house, executes a responsibility, or gets up a program. I think that Mama would have continued to be proud of her namesake - Minnie. The Wizard of Flowers - With Emphasis on Robert Henry Rucker Called Robert or Bob A towheaded, lonesome-looking little boy was Robert. To use a flower metaphor - and what could be more suitable for his life - he might have been called a “thorn among the roses”. But with his own individual sense of humor, he would have called himself a “rose among the thorns”. He played happily around the hotel in his small handmade shirts and pants; even the little suits he wore to Sunday School were handmade by Mama from old suits of brothers’. He was always accompanied by one or more females - a sister, a cousin, an aunt, or a grandmother. So he grew up feeling dissimilar to other little boys in town, feeling at odds also from the women in his family. He felt that he was an outcast. He felt different. But he was the only one in his group with a penis and that gave him a nice distinction. There were certain chores that Robert inherited by reason of his being a boy. He was always the bellhop and carried the guests’ suitcases. Mama would call out: “Robert, you bring in the wood for the cookstove and the heating stoves. It’s too hard a job for your Aunt Ruth and the girls.” However, he was a natural comedian and would stand up on the woodpile and entertain the passersby. Mama would have to give him a “knot on the head” to get him to bring in the wood. When he was supposed to be out hoeing in the garden, he would stop everyone who came by for a conversation. Mama yelled to him from the back door, “Robert, quit sucking that hoe handle and get to work on those weeds.” Robert was always furious that the girls wouldn’t let him play dolls with them, so he made up dolls of his own. One day the ice pick was his doll. He decided that his doll would go over and play with Connie’s doll outside under the big trees, so he went walking it along “pick, pick, pick” over the ground. Suddenly Connie’s scream of terror told him that the ice pick had gone into her foot. You may be sure that sister did not wait for Mama to punish him. Mama became completely exasperated with him and his dawdling so she went into a regular tirade. “I tell you, Robert, you are exactly like your grandfather. It would take Henry Rucker longer to get anything done that anyone else I ever saw but you. Your name should be Henry Rucker!” Robert looked at her in childish bewilderment and questioned haltingly; “Mammy, did you love him?” Robert was always the one who was sacrificed in their play. Since he was in the minority, the girls all tormented him even though he addressed notes to them as “The Three Fairies”. One day Mama had gone to town and returned unexpectedly. The girls had discovered that a bird had made a nest in the gutter around the long back porch of the hotel. There she had laid her eggs and hatched her baby birds. Their cheeping intrigued the four children so they found a rope, tied it around Robert’s body, and lowered him over the back banister. He would have had the birds in a minute more. Just at that second they heard Mama’s voice, ran to hide, and left Robert dangling there at the end of the rope. Mama was horrified at the sight. She rushed up the stairs and out to the back porch and pulled Robert up to safety by the piece of rope. “Mammy,” he sobbed. “I thought I could reach the baby birds; but I couldn’t. So I just held on tight to the banister.” Thus he escaped what could have been a nasty fall, but he did not escape punishment. Mama gave him a bad whipping. And the three girls, who had hidden in various places, escaped with only tongue lashings. Poor kid! He never even had a room of his own until the girls all went away from home. Every fall Mama would load up the whole family in old Studey and take us to Waco for a day at the Cotton Palace. When Robert was four years old, we took this annual outing. After a long and tiring day, we were on the way home long after midnight; Mama was driving and Sister was sitting beside her - talking to keep her awake. The four children and I were in the back - all of us in various stages of sleep. We had driven through Marlin, Bremond, Hearne; from my place on the back seat I heard Mama and Sister talking about the towns and the route. Robert had been sound asleep in the bottom of the car on top of one of the folding jump seats. Finally Mama said to Sister: “I can see the lights of Franklin.” Robert sat straight up and uttered one word which no one in the family had any idea he even knew and he promptly fell asleep again on the floor and had to be carried in when they reached home. The word was “Hallelujah!” Robert was a very argumentative child. In fact, you might say he was contentious. When he would get into a dispute with Mama, she would say, “I’ll declare, Robert, you can out argue a government mule.” Now, Robert didn’t know nor care what a government mule was. He vaguely thought it must be something in Washington. If he ever dared to contradict Mama she would threaten him: “If you don’t stop that I’ll beat you so hard you’ll want to chew millet.” Robert thought it was one word “chewmillet” until he was grown. Yet Mama wouldn’t let anyone else touch him. He was her little boy. She often talked to me about the children. “I don’t know why the Lord has given them all four to me to raise. They are so different; I must remember that and deal with them in individual ways. I can make of them great men and women if only I can find the way to guide them aright.” A U.S. geodetics survey team stayed at the hotel once for two or three months. It took them all summer to build a pipeline. Mama put them in double rooms and gave them special rates, but she didn’t seem to be able to fill them up at the table. One of their favorite foods was ham and red eye gravy served on rice. One day when Robert was waiting on the table, he balanced a huge platter of the food on a big tray and reached over to put it on the table; the gravy spilled and ran down a man’s back - covered with a clean white shirt - down to the floor where it congealed in a few minutes. Robert just did not know what to say - not even a word; so he merely put the tray down and took out at the front door. Mama was looking through her little peephole in the swinging door to the kitchen to see if the men wanted anything else to eat and she witnessed the whole affair. Robert still considers himself lucky that he did not get a good licking as a result. Three generations of the black Porch family, headed by Aunt Fannie and Uncle Otter, had washed and ironed for the hotel and for Mrs. Rucker’s family. I have talked about them before. Aunt Fannie’s granddaughter, Margaret Rose, a young woman about Robert’s age, would wash and starch and iron his white suit and shirts in the summertime. Margaret Rose declared herself: “Foe God, Mr. Robert, you could not excape me if I was only single and you was only a Niggah.” Aunt Fannie lived with her daughter Josie out in the country. Mama would send Robert to take food out to her on Christmas afternoon. As he approached her tumble-down shack (but always scrupulously clean) he would call out, recognizing that she was blind, “Hi, Aunt Fannie, This is Robert bringing you some Christmas dinner.” “Foe God, boy; you’re my honey chile. Makes me feel like I wuz back at the hotel wid Uncle Otter. You all go back an’ tell Miss Minnie I thanks her very kindly for sendin’ me this good food.” Years later, long after Aunt Fannie’s death, I went out to Josie’s to try to run down Mama’s old organ which she had given to Aunt Fannie years before. But it must have long since been used for firewood, since no one ever realizes the value of a thing until it is gone. Mama loved things that grew. One of her favorite pursuits after supper was to get out the Hastings Seed Catalog from Atlanta, Georgia and study its well-worn pages. She called it “The Wish Book”. Robert shared this love with her. Mammy would order him anything he wanted from the book. So Robert first learned about plants by buying the seed from pictures in a seed catalog. Thus he learned one plant from another and became knowledgeable about them. He loved flowers and he became personal friends with all the old ladies in town. Miss Jessie Patterson, Miss Maggie Mitchell, Miss Kate Mitchell; these ladies may have been considered “The Royal Family” of Franklin by some people - but they were close friends of Roberts’. They had mutual interests. At the Patterson home there was a pit greenhouse and at the Mitchell house a part underground brick structure, sort of a conservatory. Robert reveled in these and built an underground one for himself in the back yard of the hotel. Miss Maggie had married Mr. John Mitchell who went to live in the Patterson home. Miss Jessie became a music teacher. She had a little studio on the school grounds where sister and I both had studied music. Miss Jessie went for a drive every afternoon in the surrey with the fringe on top. Miss Kate worked in the bank. She was a tall, elegant, beautiful lady. But they all spoke the language of flowers and Robert was very fortunate to have their friendship. He was always play acting. I have already told about the time Mama made him wear a dress to town for punishment; but it turned out that he had a ball instead. The Chamber of Commerce gave a play - an evening of entertainment - one year. Robert was a colored girl in the play. He was a show within himself, and when he powdered his face with an enormous puff it brought the house down. Robert was a big tease; he tormented the girls so much that it made them furious. They did not realize until years later how cute and talented and dear he really was. Robert never had anyone to tell him about sex. He learned about it in the hotel - often in a sordid manner. One of the first exposures was when he carried out Mr. Lime’s rubbers in his slop jar. They wouldn’t flush down the septic tank, so Robert would take them out in the back and bury them. Mr. Lime was a fascinating person. He had traveled all over the world and thrilled the children with his stories. Some nights he would put a nickel on the screen and call to Robert and Minnie to come out and listen to some tales. Mama would say quickly “Don’t go. He’s drunk.” The kids were in Holy Terror of him and of the mosquito netting canopy over his bed. A woman appeared from his past and was shacking up with him at the time of his death. She left with one of his suitcases packed full of his possessions. Whenever the magazine girls came to town they had to unload tons and tons of luggage. Robert carried all their suitcases upstairs, but he was amply repaid because they gave him a $2.00 tip. Immediately all the boys in Franklin who were called “Hard Pecker Boys” started flocking down to the hotel. One night they raised so much hell that Mama put them out in the middle of the night. They were no match for my mother’s denunciations. A transplanted young Houstonian engaged in the legal profession lived at the hotel. He was a very staid, quiet man who taught a Sunday School class on Sunday. His room was at the top of the steps, the room which had once been Mr. Silverman’s, a single room with a single bed. Mama had made some latticework frame half doors which hooked outside the wooden doors. They were covered with muslin and served for ventilation in those pre-air-conditioning days. As Robert took the luggage of the girls upstairs, he could see this regular guest standing silhouetted in his doorway. He wore a night cap and scallop tailed nightshirt which hung on him like a Jack as he was well endowed. It was a magnificent sight. One of the girls shouted to him: “You long codded son of a bitch, get your ass back in that room.” The man slammed the wooden door and didn’t come out again till after they were gone. Room No. 12 had a private bath. It was rented to an old bachelor. Later, when he married Robert carried up buckets of hot water for the man to take a bath. He bathed in front of Robert, who could see that this boarder was well endowed too. Once, a man died in the hotel. They embalmed his body there before shipping it. Robert watched. The mortician cut his arm with a scalpel and placed a thing on it to draw blood. Robert became sick and could not watch the whole process. Mama called him: “Come on, Robert, and carry down these three big slop jars. Bury the stuff in them out behind the garden and wash out the slop jars with lye.” When they took the coffin to the depot, they called Alma Gant’s husband, Fred, who drove the dray. It was a heavy wagon with metal wheels and was pulled by two enormous Percheron horse. They were high steppers and were a real novelty. The only other Percheron horses that I have ever seen in my life - and only on TV at that - are in the Old Milwaukee Beer advertisements publicizing Budweiser Beer. The dray was also used to bring the drummers’ big trunks of samples from the depot to the National Hotel. They would be put off the train at the depot docks, then loaded on the dray and brought across the street in great style to No. 17, the sample room, where they were unpacked. Their contents looked like fairyland to the kids peeking in at the windows. Sometimes the drummers would stay for a week - never locking a door nor a window. Oh things were safe at the National Hotel - about sixty five years ago! Robert lived on at the hotel after the other three children were gone. His last year in high school, then two years after he had finished school, and then the years in A&M, Mama turned to him and their relationship grew much closer. He learned to appreciate and love her more and she loved him in return. Mama had long wanted to rebuild the old hotel. She had gone through several renovations, repainting and papering and changing of rooms, but the building was essentially the same as it was when she had first bought it. It was her utmost desire to build a new hotel and she dreamed of and planned for it for years. They were wonderful plans for a woman of her age and lack of practical experience. They showed her native intelligence and her vision and hope. Robert and Mama were alone much of the time and he shared her dreams. Mama’s ideas went much beyond her times. We were all familiar with her oft-expressed notions. “They knew nothing about air-conditioning in those days, so I had windows put in every possible place and kept them all wide open. The cooking for the hotel has to be done on a big iron stove fired with wood, resulting in very hot temperatures in the kitchen. I had my stove specially made with some modifications. It was the first of its kind in Franklin. I knew from years of experience in operating a hotel that you needed two ovens - a cooking and a warming oven; also that there had to be a certain amount of cooking space on the top of the stove. So I made sure that in the fire box of the oven there was plenty of room for hot water to supply the two public baths in the hotel. “I tell you, Ruthie, it is my desire to build a fifty gallon tank in the kitchen so that I can have hot and cold running water in every room in the house. I’ll have an auxiliary unit installed and when the cookstove cools down at night, I can fire it up with gas. We’ll get rid of all those old bowls and pitchers (and to think that I have only one of them now - and it has a big crack in it). I tell you we’ll have a real modern hotel in Franklin.” This was a wonderful accomplishment in the days when no place, except big city hotels, had hot and cold running water. The kitchen was made convenient and serviceable. In front of the stove, the dishes could be served on one side of the six-foot table and Robert or anyone working could pick them up on the other side. When the dishes were washed in a double sink they were put up in a cupboard on the wall. The salads were served on a separate table. There were huge vents and exhaust fans over the stove. In the dining room at the back were two rows of tables for six people each, and in the front there were two rows for four each. There was an inviolable rule that the tables had to be kept neat and clean at all times, and that the counter and stools in front of it had to be wiped and shiny. There was a passageway behind the counter with a door into the office at the far end. Double French glass doors led from the dining room into the office. Originally there was a water cooler in the corner of the office which Mama required us to keep full and iced at all times, but one day there came in the mail The Special Hotel Equipment Catalogue from Chicago; and the day of the cooler was over. Mama pounced on it delightedly. “Look, Robert, here is the latest thing in ice chests. The water runs over the coils and there is a fresh supply of ice water at all times. I’ll venture this will be very welcome to thirsty travelers.” This was just another example of Mama’s ingenuity in providing for the convenience and comfort of her guest. Robert recalls: “During the day I frequently saw her jotting down ideas on the backs of envelopes. These she would transfer to paper at night long after everyone else was in bed. She worked with a cedar pencil on large pieces of butcher paper. It was white with a faint tinge of pink, sixty-six inches wide, and comparable in texture to drafting paper. I know because I had to get it for her at Cousin Jim’s Dry Goods Store. It withstood the graphite of the pencil, so she had to lick it for every mark. She worked painstakingly on all the details. This draftsman used a foot ruler like the one I had in school because she knew the plans had to be drawn according to scale. I’ll tell you she used space relationships like nobody’s business.”
|