A MARVELOUS WEEKEND

I went to the Texas Panhandle for the weekend and had a wonderful time. Every minute was filled with excitement, new experiences and adventure. First I had a visit and lunch with wonderful friends at Amarillo National Bank.

My next adventure while I was there was to walk across the street from ANB and visit the High Plains Public Radio recording studio. I was to meet Mary Palmer who was driving in from Kansas to talk to me about recording something from my book for NPR. I arrived at the studio a bit early. Em, my 9-year-old granddaughter, elected to go with me, so we had time for a nice visit before Mary Palmer arrived. Once she arrived she talked to me about my book and what it was like to self-publish a book. I told her that it had come about because of my memoir writing classes and she decided that should be the focus of our interview. Her manner made me very relaxed and we "chatted" with the big microphone up against my mouth for the better part of an hour. At the end of the interview she invited my granddaughter to comment about growing up in the same area where her grandmother had grown up. Em stepped up to the microphone and answered Mary's questions like a pro. I was very impressed and proud of her. Our interview will be broadcast in the Panhandle area on September 25 at 10:30 a.m. Fortunately, I will be there again that weekend for my high school reunion, so I will gather Em and family around and we will listen to this exciting (at least for us!) radio broadcast.

I will post the link to the broadcast for other areas of the country when Mary sends it to me.

My next adventure was to attend the dedication of the new St. Mary's Church in Amarillo. The church burned about three years ago and this was a momentous occasion for everyone there and for our family. My mother attended St. Mary's school when she was in the 8th grade. Fr. Smyer, the pastor there for many, many years had been a childhood friend of my dad's and played golf with him in his later years. While there I saw my parents' former pastor and the new bishop who had been our pastor several years ago. The new church is beautiful and the ceremony was lovely!

Early Saturday morning we got up to attend Son #2's triathlon at Lake Tanglewood. The weather was very cool with a bit of drizzle at first but clearing before the race began. I had never attended a triathlon before and it was exciting because my son was participating. Below is a picture of all of us. Note the matching shirts we all wore in support of WB (Son #2's nickname--it stands for Wrangler Boy).

The girls are helping WB stretch before the triathlon began.

And WB is being congratulated by his girls upon completion of the race! Congratulations, Son #2! I am proud of you--and your girls!

In the afternoon I was treated to a tour of their place in the country and a view of some of the wildlife that visits their front yard. The picture taken from their front yard looks like it might make a terrific painting!

I hated to return home on Sunday, but was consoled by the thought that I will return in two weeks for my high school reunion at the end of September.

A Quick Update

Some time ago I mentioned gathering my stories about growing up in the Texas Panhandle and self-publishing them at Lulu.com. Well, that project is still in the works. I have gathered the stories and printed them out for editing. A couple of weeks ago my husband (a wonderful editor with a BIG red pen!) looked them over and made a few suggestions. I took them with me on our trip to Oregon and worked on them on the plane. I made a few corrections on some and a major overhaul on others. Then I had a few more ideas for stories and added them, along with a few recipes and more pictures.

This project is turning out to be quite a job and is spread out all around my computer chair now. I realize that October is breathing down my neck and I need to forget about my passion for perfection and just get on with the project if I want it ready for Christmas.

Sigh! Part of my problem is that I have too many projects and not enough time. However, I suspect that is better than having nothing to do and being bored!

Self-Publishing Your Writing

I have been pondering gathering all of my stories about growing up in the Texas Panhandle and self-publishing them. Mainly I would want to put them into book form for my family members to enjoy. Perhaps my grandchildren will one day pick up a book of my stories and be amazed (or amused?) at my stories of growing up in a small Texas town in the 1940s and 1950s.

Today I read Marlys Marshall Styne's blog entry on self-publishing and decided that I needed to get moving in that direction. She has self-published several books and I just recently received a copy of her latest collection of rictameter poetry. It is really an impressive book and gives me the incentive to go ahead with my own project. Now all I need to do is get myself in gear and take the first big step--getting organized and getting moving!

SUMMER FREEDOM

I grew up in Pampa, in the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle in the 1940s and early 1950s and my summers were full of fun. There were few rules or worries to govern my activities as I played with friends in our neighborhood. Our mothers turned us loose and trusted us to use good sense in our activities, and we had many adventures in those days when we created our own entertainment as we went along.

During my treasured summer vacations, I was allowed to roam freely with my friends as far as we could travel by ourselves. We played tag and chase in our neighborhood and built playhouses in backyards. We climbed up on the garage roof and jumped off with towels tied around our necks—playing “Superman.” Short sticks became our pistols and longer ones were rifles as we played cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians, chasing each other down alleys, around lilac hedges and between garages. We skated for miles around and around our entire block, walked tall on stilts that Daddy built for all of us, and rode our bicycles far and wide.

Since we had the insatiable appetites of growing young people, we snacked from house to house, and foraged for food from yard to yard. We picked and ate Mustang grapes, plums, peaches, mulberries, and cherry tomatoes growing in nearby yards, but we usually left tart cherries on the trees. We enjoyed treats from Mrs. Robinson who lived on the corner. Mrs. Robinson had no children of her own, but she always had Saltines, apples, and cookies for us as we played throughout the neighborhood. We always made it a point to stop and pet her big bird dog as he slept in a corner of the kitchen where she always seemed to be cooking. Come to think of it, I never remember seeing that dog awake.

On hot afternoons with the dry wind blowing against us, we walked down to the creek and gathered tadpoles in glass pickle jars on our way to the local swimming pool. At the pool, we spent long, lazy afternoons dog paddling around in the water and doing belly busters into the deep end—until the polio scare came along. Our mothers thought that polio might come from the swimming water, so the pools were closed, and our swimming days ended for several years. One of our friends did have polio and spent the summer in Dallas in an iron lung. That really put the fear into all of us! After that, our mothers made us take naps, or at least long rests in the afternoon. That became our time to read on those long, hot afternoons of enforced inactivity.

In the cool of the summer mornings, I was allowed to walk to the library in the basement of the courthouse. I was always mesmerized by the walls lined with books on tall shelves in that musty-smelling place. My dad introduced me to the library and his rule was that I could only check out two books at a time and could not go back to the library until I had read both books. During our required summer rest periods, I loved to sit under our backyard plum tree, or lie on a blanket under the big elm trees in our yard to read. I finished the entire collection of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books during those summer reading times. Ah, summer freedom!

On a recent return visit to Pampa, I once again caught a whiff of the sulfuric odor from the natural gas wells and the vinegary sweet scent of the Celanese plant just outside of town. The familiar smells, the glowing refinery flares at night, and the soft staccato sound of those pump jack engines—pump, pump, pumping the oil and gas in the still of the hot summer nights—were just as I remembered them. The carbon black plant was still there but it no longer puffed out black clouds of soot and smoke that I remembered from my childhood days. As I took in the many sights, smells, and sounds in that small Panhandle oil town, I realized that it is a place of many memories for me.

Happy Father's Day

My father was a quiet man, but very interesting. He worked almost his whole life for a wholesale hardware company where he began in the warehouse stocking inventory for shipping materials out to a five-state area. He moved up to salesman and traveled a large territory in the upper Texas Panhandle for many years. In his later years with the company he moved to the main office as head of the buying department.





Daddy loved to read. As I learned to read, he took me to the library where I was allowed to check out two books. I could not go back to the library until I had read both books--usually in two weeks, when they were due. Daddy loved mysteries and westerns, especially Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, and others. As I grew older, I was allowed to ride my bike to the library by myself and pick out new books even if Daddy was not ready to return his own books. I really felt grown up then.


The best vacations that I can remember are the ones that Daddy used to plan for us. His company gave him two weeks of vacation each year and he always “put in” for the last two weeks in July. In his job he drove miles and miles each week to cover his territory. However, for his vacations, he always took us on marathon trips throughout the Southwest. We visited national parks and stayed in small motels along the way. Most of our trips west followed the now famous Route 66 from Texas to New Mexico and across to Arizona. We also took trips up into Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado.




My sister remembers our trips to the local train station and how Daddy depended heavily on the local trains to deliver his carefully completed orders to his company by Monday morning. On Sunday evening, we would all pile into the wood-paneled station wagon and head for the local depot which was built up on an incline surrounded by green, grassy slopes that provided us with the perfect playground to roll or slide down. Sometimes we walked down the brick platform and jumped onto the tracks to practice balancing with our arms outstretched like graceful gymnasts. We were never far from Dad's long reach, and he always knew when the train was approaching the depot. He thoroughly enjoyed explaining to us the facts and pitfalls of business along with his life's wisdom. Mailing his work orders to the company and getting them there on time were very important to him. He had marvelous work habits that left lasting impressions on all of us children. He let us carry the large manila envelope containing his purchase orders for the week to the depot's mail room where he paid the postage so that the envelope would be placed on the next freight train headed for Amarillo.



We could hear in the distance a faint whistle as the train approached and we could see it stop at the water tower to fill up on water. I then chugged slowly into the station area. Many times a passenger train would roll into the station dropping off travelers coming home from an exciting excursion or picking up new passengers headed somewhere beyond Pampa. We watched fascinated as men unloaded baggage onto carts that could be pushed from either end. We liked to play on the baggage carts, and Dad at times pushed us up and down the brick walkway while waiting for our train.


The mail car usually followed the engine at the front of the train and had a double Dutch door located at the rear of the car. The top half of the door would be open, and we could see the lighted interior that contained a wall of small cubicles where mail was sorted. The mailman positioned himself at the open door where he leaned out and grabbed the mailbag hanging on a hook over the tracks. As the train left the station, we could see the red light on the caboose twinkling and dancing as it disappeared into the night. We returned to our car where mother was patiently waiting and sometimes we headed to the local Dairy Queen for a brown derby before heading home for bed.


My sister says that she treasures those moments spent with Dad when he offered his bits of wisdom. These talks with Dad are now gone with the passing of time--never to be repeated but only to be relived through family stories.



Happy Father's Day to all fathers who might read this blog today.

A MAN OF MANY TALENTS

My father’s father was Joseph Newton Riggs, Sr., but I called him Granddaddy Riggs. He was also known in Amarillo as J.N. I did not know him well and he died when I was about nine. He spent the last three years of his life in a nursing home in Dallas, so I did not see him after I was five or six years old. He was always a mystery to me.

I recall Granddaddy Riggs as a little old man who did not say much and followed my grandmother, Mammy, around and did what she told him to do. I thought she was very bossy and seemed to treat him like a child. I even thought that he might not have been too bright. The two pictures to the left are the way that I remember Granddaddy Riggs. I suspect his health was beginning to decline in those years and that is probably why we do not have many pictures of Granddaddy Riggs in our family photographs after that time.

About ten years ago, I began seeking more information about Granddaddy Riggs. I was always curious about what kind of man he really was and decided to ask my father about him. Daddy had never said much about his father and it was clear that his mother played a much more important role in his life. With Daddy’s stories, and the help of the Amarillo Public Library, and the Amarillo newspaper archives, I found out quite a bit about Granddaddy Riggs.

Daddy told me that Granddaddy Riggs was first married to Minnie Little in Paris, Texas, and they had three children. Minnie Little died shortly after the birth of Katherine (Kate), their third child. The older two children in the family were Ralph Smith Riggs and George Record Riggs. According to Daddy, the children were kept by a Mrs. Bettison in Paris, Texas, until Granddaddy Riggs married Maude Ophelia Hancock (we called her Mammy) and then the children later moved to live with Granddaddy and Mammy in Amarillo.

According to Daddy, Granddaddy Riggs worked as a salesman for a small wholesale hardware company in Paris, Texas, after his first wife died. He then went to work for Simmons Hardware Company in St. Louis, Missouri for a time. Since he is not listed in the 1900 Texas Census, I assume that he was in Missouri in 1900—just a year after the death of his first wife. However, he is not listed in the Missouri Census Index either. Daddy said that Granddaddy Riggs became a specialty salesman for Keen Kutter knives, scissors and garden tools. The Keen Kutter line of tools was a product of the E.C. Simmons Hardware Company, and those tools are now sought out as collector’s items.

Granddaddy Riggs moved his new wife, Maude Hancock Riggs, to Longview, Texas, and that is where Daddy was born. The birth certificate for Daddy states that his father was working as a traveling salesman for Simmons Hardware at the time of the birth of his son. Daddy said that Granddaddy Riggs met Mr. E.W. Hardin, the founder of Amarillo Hardware Company, in St. Louis, MO, when they were both working there. Mr. Hardin encouraged Granddaddy Riggs to move to Amarillo to work for Amarillo Hardware Company as a traveling salesman in the early days of the company they moved to Amarillo shortly after Daddy was born in 1906. At first they rented a house and then, about 1908, Granddaddy Riggs built a large home at 1410 Monroe for his family.

The picture to the left shows the newly finished Riggs home in Amarillo. Mammy wrote the names Kate, Newton (Daddy), and Maude (Mammy) on the picture. Granddaddy and Mammy raised their children in that house and Mammy stayed there until her death in 1959. The house was remodeled in later years. The porch on the left side was turned into a sun room and a portico, driveway and garage were added on the right side.

Granddaddy Riggs worked as a traveling salesman for Amarillo Hardware Company in the Texas Panhandle for a time, and then opened a car dealership in Amarillo. The 1910 census lists J.N, 35, living at 1410 Monroe Street with his wife, Maude, and children: Ralph, 14; Record, 13; Katherine, 10; and J. Newton, 2. The 1910 census states that the occupation of J.N. is “Commercial Traveler.” The census also indicates that he owned his home and did not owe any money on the house. By 1920 the city directory shows that he owned Panhandle Motor Company. He was also part owner of a hardware store in Dalhart, and was elected a County Judge in Amarillo in the 1930s. During his years in Amarillo, he also acquired a number of real estate lots and property in the city.

According to newspaper articles in the archives of the Amarillo Globe News and the Amarillo Daily News, Granddaddy Riggs was a busy and productive man in his younger days and was quite an active leader in civic organizations. He was Chairman of the Victory Loan Committee of Potter County in 1919 and is listed as an organizing member of the Amarillo Lions Club that year. He was elected eminent commander of the Masonic Lodge in 1920. He was president of the Lions Club in 1922, president of the Amarillo-Panhandle Automotive Association, and was a director of the Tri-State Fair Association in 1923. He was elected president of the Board of City Development in 1925, was a Panhandle Council Boy Scout sponsor in 1927 and was president of the group that year. He was Potentate of the Khiva Shrine Temple in 1929 (see picture to the left). He was quoted in a 1938 newspaper story entitled “Plains Drummer” describing the life of traveling salesmen in the Panhandle.

The newspapers also had several articles about his tenure as county judge in Potter County between 1935 and 1938, including one about budget woes, another about the role of the county judge, and a humorous one over a salary dispute, entitled “Ink Pots Fly in County Row.” Through Daddy’s stories and the pictures and newspaper articles that I found, I came to know much more about Granddaddy Riggs, and I feel that I have grown a great deal closer to him through my research. I learned what an active and productive man he was. I now see him as someone who was involved in a leadership capacity with a number of civic organizations, who owned his own business, and who was also a well-known county judge. I regret that I missed knowing more about him earlier in my life. However, I am thankful that the picture I have of him now is much fuller than what I remembered from my childhood.

SIDEWALK MEMORIES

The sidewalks that I remember best are the ones in my neighborhood when I was growing up in the Texas Panhandle. Those sidewalks surrounded our whole block except for the space in front of Billy Bob Caldwell’s house down the hill towards the dry creek. I am not sure why their sidewalk was missing, but their house was set way back on their lot and they used their front yard as a parking lot for a number of old cars. There always seemed to be men there taking parts out of those cars or putting things into strange places under the raised hoods.

The rest of our block had sidewalks that we children used mainly for roller skating. The concrete sidewalks were installed in squares. The squares were probably originally flat on the ground. However, huge elm trees that grew along the curbs in most yards sent out bulky roots along the surface of the ground and those roots caused the squares of sidewalk to tilt at various angles. Some squares were even cracked into two or more pieces. This interesting phenomenon made roller skating quite an adventure. The tilts and humps of the sidewalk caused us to become skilled at navigating the ups and downs and the bumps and dips that we encountered as we sped around the block until we came to Billy Bob’s front yard. We could not skate in the dirt for fear of clogging up our ball bearing wheels, so we turned around at Billy Bob’s and went the other direction around the block, jumping the curb at the gravel alley and gingerly walking our skates across that rocky surface.

Roller skating was a favorite after school activity. I remember dashing home to change clothes, donning my stiff-as-a board blue jeans that chaffed between the legs by the end of the afternoon, strapping on my skates with leather ankle straps and tightening the front toe grips until the soles of my brown, scuffed oxfords curled up a bit. I then proudly put my skate key on a string around my neck. The skate key was a very important part of the whole roller skating activity. The skate key (seen in the middle of the picture above) kept wheels on tight and secured the nut on the bottom of the skate that allowed it to be lengthened or shortened. It also tightened the metal toe grips on the front of the skate. Everything had to be secure to keep the skates on the shoe.

I suspect that we became as skilled on our roller skates as the skate boarding youngsters I see today—jumping curbs, going down steps, and facing a variety of uneven surfaces.

WE CALLED HER "MAMMY"

Mammy was my dad’s mother and she wanted us to call her “Mammy.” We often went to visit Mammy in Amarillo when I was growing up. Mammy was tall and stately—almost six feet tall with big bones, large, dark eyes and dark, tight, curly hair, which she wore very short. When I was little, she seemed enormous with long arms and exceptionally long fingers. When she went out she always dressed in suits with frilly blouses. I doubt if she ever owned a pair of pants, but she did love beautiful shoes and hats. On her fingers, she wore lovely rings that always seemed too loose and clinked, along with the many sturdy bracelets that she always wore. I inherited one of those beautiful antique rings and several of those bracelets which are made of ivory.

Mammy was very strict and I was always a little bit afraid of her. However, I still remember many bits of wise advice that she gave me. I liked helping her in the garden where she grew beautiful, tall flowers. One day I was having a wonderful time carrying dirt in a garden spade and piling it up on the sidewalk. Mammy noticed what I was doing and told me to put the dirt back where I got it and gave me a broom to sweep the sidewalk. I gave the dirt a casual brush or two with the broom and she told me to do a better job of cleaning up the sidewalk. I will never forget her words which have followed me through life: “If the job is worth doing, it is worth doing right.”

Another bit of advice Mammy often emphasized was to put all of my money in the bank and save it for a rainy day. She also gave me distinct instructions for only using four squares of toilet paper when I went to the bathroom because more would stop up the toilet. I often laugh when I roll off more than four squares of toilet paper and feel a twinge of guilt that perhaps Mammy is still watching somewhere over my shoulder.

Mammy loved old things, especially beautiful old things. She touched her old crystal vases with such a sense of awe and then talk about them with such seriousness that I soon grew to love old things myself. She sometimes let me hold the old pieces and stressed how important they were in our family history. Now I have some of her old pieces and I love to look at them and handle them, but I also gained a wonderful sense of the importance of family history from Mammy during those times when she shared her treasures and stories with me.

Fortunately, I was able to spend time with Mammy after she had several strokes. I was in high school at the time and I learned about her romantic side and her love of poetry. She was a great dreamer and told me many stories those last years of her life. Now, I wish I had paid more attention to her stories and written them down, but I was young and impatient to get on with my own life and did not understand the importance of the life lessons that she was teaching me.

A New Venture

For some time now I have been considering putting together a collection of my stories about growing up in the Texas Panhandle. This first post will be my introduction, and as I polish the snippets of my memories, I will add one from time to time. See what you think:

GROWING UP IN PAMPA, TEXAS

I grew up in the small Texas Panhandle town of Pampa in the 1940s and 1950s. Pampa was a thriving oil town with a carbon black plant, and refineries that belched black smoke and malodorous stuff into the air which combined with the stench of the open oil and gas wells. I often wonder about the health hazards of growing up in such a foul environment but all of our family seems healthy enough. After all, Daddy lived to be 93 and Mother is still alive at 92.

Summers were hot and dry most of the time, and winters were cold and often snowy. It seems that the wind blew year around…hot and dry in the summer, and cold and frigid in the winter. We had no air conditioning, but Daddy put a swamp cooler in the dining room window the last few years we lived in Pampa. The heat in our house came from the oven in the kitchen, a gas stove in our living room false fireplace, a floor furnace in the middle of the house, and an open gas stove in the bathroom. I think we all burned our feet on the floor furnace as we were learning to walk, but it was great to stand over that furnace to warm up on a cold winter’s day.

Daddy was a traveling salesman for a wholesale hardware company and was gone most of the week “working his territory.” On Fridays and Saturdays he sold hardware products to the stores in and around Pampa and sometimes let me accompany him on those days. I had a wonderful time visiting in the hardware stores and wandering around lumberyards. To this day, the smell of wood can transport me straight back to a Saturday afternoon in a Higginbotham-Bartlett Lumberyard with Daddy leaning on the counter chatting with the men working there and writing down their orders in his order book with everything in triplicate!

Mother made most of our clothes and was a wonderful cook. She read to us, played games with us, and also did needlework, and many arts and crafts. All three of us children grew up doing arts and crafts with her and learning crafts of our own. I remember beading, copper tooling, needlework, paint by number books, shell jewelry, copper enameling, leather tooling, and many, many other crafts. It seems like we tried them all at one time or another, thanks to Mother’s help and encouragement.

Our lives in Pampa were busy and full, and I remember that as a very happy time in my life.