Rural Living In The Texas Panhandle - Not For The Squimish

As a young boy growing up in the Texas panhandle in the 1950's and 60's, I enjoyed life to the fullest and along the way I actually learned a few things that helped me when I became an adult.  For example, never put your hands into a pile of rocks or brush without looking first, because the likelihood of finding a rattlesnake or scorpion is pretty high.  During the spring and summer months, always pay attention to the color of the clouds and the direction of the wind so that you won't be caught off guard by a tornado.  And most important of all, never, ever sit in the back of the pick-up when going to town with grand daddy or else be prepared to get peppered with tobacco juice when he spits out the window!  He was real fond of plug tobacco......Day's Work.

But aside from all of that, I really enjoyed going to my grandparents house who lived on the out skirts of a little town 15 miles from the Oklahoma border with a population at that time of approximately 5,000.  My grandparents were by no stretch of the imagination financially secure and pretty much lived off Social Security and any other odd jobs they could pick up along the way to make ends meet. They lived in a two bedroom tar paper shack, the only indoor plumbing they had was the sink where my lovely grandmother prepared meals and would wash her dainties, the toilet was an outhouse and the bathing was done either in a number 9 washtub during the winter or a make shift shower out in the peach orchard.

This shower was constructed of two burlap cotton sacks that were split in half and nailed to boards that stood 6' in the air, while the shower head was a 1-pound coffee can with multiple 10-penny nail holes poked into it.  The water came from a 30' garden hose that was attached to the coffee can with a piece of bailing wire.  God, bailing wire fixed everything until Duct Tape came along!

It wasn't until about the summer of 1961 that my grandparents finally got indoor plumbing, so they wouldn't have to make trips to the outhouse and fight the forces of nature during those cold winter months.  The 'little shack' was located at the back of my grandparents property and sat directly between the chicken house and hog pens.  It was not uncommon to see the occasional snake or two slithering about looking for the field mice that would frequent the area from time to time searching for food either in the chicken house or the hog trough.

I do not ever recall seeing toilet paper in my grandparents outhouse....never!  There was always at least one, sometimes three, magazines from Sears & Roebuck; Montgomery Wards or an S&H Green Stamps catalog laying on the floor for when you needed to wipe.  Conducting your business in an outhouse really wasn't all that difficult, as long as you followed a few simple rules:

  1. the hole is deeper than it appears, so don't drop anything of importance down there;
  2. check for critters and use the stick in the corner to clean out the spiders and cobwebs;
  3. sit still - squirming will cause you to get splinters;
  4. shut the door to keep the dogs and chickens out;
  5. ladies could use the 'bombardier method' by hoovering over the hole at any time;
  6. either take a deep breath or use a clothes pin on your nose - the smell can make you vomit; and
  7. leave enough magazine papers for the next person to use.

I discovered at an early age that lighting a brown paper bag full of Black Cat cherry bombs and fire crackers and dropping it into the hole would result in: (a) large quantities of crap shooting upward and splattering the walls and ceiling; (b) hens wouldn't lay eggs for three days; (c) every dog within a two mile radius would start barking; (d) sparks from that much black powder will set the magazines on the floor on fire; and (e), my 60-year old grandmother could still snap a switch off her peach tree while in a dead run and fan my britches with it in a rapid fashion. That's what I learned!

My grandmother would make lye soap about every other year and it was always a major production to say the least.  She used a huge black iron kettle to mix all the concoctions that was needed to make this soap and the basics ingredients were slabs of fat from a recent hog killing and at least a gallon, maybe more, of liquid lye.  Once she poured the lye into the vat, there wasn't a bird or fly of any kind within a 4-mile radius of their house.  That stuff would literally take your breath away. Her and granddaddy would gather up enough fire wood for this ordeal, and once he got the fire going real good, he would go inside the house and leave grandmother to her soap making.  Granddaddy was good at doing a lot of things, but making soap wasn't one of them.  Grandmother didn't need a boss.

 One summer while grandmother was mixing her brew, my brothers and some of our cousins were playing in an elm tree out by the road in front of the house.  We were maybe 15 yards from the bubbling pot of hog fat when grandmother yelled out "You kid's stay away from this fire while I go in the house for a minute. I've got to get another sharp knife."  At that time in our young lives, if stupidity was dirt we had enough to cover just a little over an acre.  I don't recall which one of my cousins it was, but they thought it would be really fun to see how many small pebbles we could pitch into the vat of boiling hog fat before grandmother came back.  Just as he was rearing back to zing his second small hand full of pebbles, grandmother bolted out of the house with a 'home made fly swatter' and proceeded to dance with him in a tight circle while spanking those skinny legs. The boy never knew what hit him....it all happened so fast!

Did I forget to mention that whenever grandmother would get a new fly swatter, she would rip the wire swatting piece off and replace it with a piece of bicycle inner tube.  With this slight modification in the swatter, that damn thing would never wear out!

During those times when the weather wasn't conducive for taking care of business in the outhouse, such as during the winter, grandmother had a thunder mug strategically situated in both bedroom's in her home.  For years I never knew this pot was called anything other than a thunder mug until I was stationed in Scotland and discovered they call it a 'chamber pot'. When I asked granddaddy why it was called a thunder mug, he said "Whenever you squat down to take a shit over the mug and you fart, well, it sounds like a clap of thunder!"  At this point he gave one of his deep belly laughs and it was really loud!!  Grandmother was not amused to say the least, but that was granddaddy's way of cuttin' to the chase.

 One winter weekend when my brother and I, and three of our girl cousin's were at grandmother and granddaddy's, a three inch snow storm blew in across the panhandle and everything came to a complete stand still.  In the spare bedroom were two double beds and each bed had no less than 4-5 quilts that grandmother had made and boy, those things were heavy!  But, once you got into bed and got them warm, it was absolute heaven.  Before getting ready for bed, grandmother would ensure each of us had gone to the bathroom, because there was only one thunder mug for the five of us to use during the night.  And I would like to add, none of grandmother's thunder mugs had lids on them.

My brother woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom, but what he soon discovered in the darkness woke the entire house up.  One of the girls had gotten up earlier to urinate in the pot, but forgot to push it back under the bed.  Just as my brother was sliding over the top of me, his right foot stepped into the thunder mug that was partially filled with at least cold, wet urine! He started bouncing around on one foot like a Puerto Rican shortstop while holding the other foot off the floor saying, "I got dooky on my foot! Oh, my God! Get it off, get it off!  I can fell dooky between my toes!  Dammit Buck, it ain't funny!"  Once our grandparents figured out what was going on, granddaddy stood at the door laughing hysterically while grandmother gave my brother a towel for him to wipe his feet and to mop up the spilled urine on the floor.  A night to remember!

All baths for grandchildren staying at grandmother and granddaddy's house during those windy, cold, winter months were taken in the kitchen in a large number 9 galvanized wash tub.  Grandmother would heat the water in her kettle on the stove and pour the contents into the tub numerous times until it was filled at least half way from the top.  When not in use the tub was hung on the outside wall of their make shift garage and there it stayed until it was needed again.  Taking a bath was an experience not to be forgotten, because the only heat in the kitchen was from the stove when she was preparing meals.  There wasn't any dawdling around either.  You snapped your towel up and make a bee line towards the front room where there was a gas heater putting out lots and lots of warmth. None of this trash of standing around the kitchen with a wet towel wrapped around you while shakin' like a dog crappin' peach pits!

So, what does my grandparents galvanized wash tub and four grandson's with new BB guns they got for Christmas have in common?  Catastrophe maybe? 

Two days after Christmas all the relatives gathered at our grandparents for a family gathering of sorts and it was the perfect day in the Texas panhandle to be outside.  It was sunny, about 74 degrees, very little wind and warm enough we didn't need to wear a coat.  Right off hand I don't recall what brand of BB guns my cousins and I had, whether they were Daisy or Red Rider, but they both required the use of a lever action to inject BB's into the chamber.

Long about 2pm the four of us grew tired of shooting at tin cans, glass soda bottles, milk buckets, big cardboard boxes and old headlights out of granddaddy's model-T pickup.  While sitting on the ground beside granddaddy's garage sharing a half smoked cigarette butt somebody had swiped from the ash tray in one of the cars, one cousin came up with what we thought was a brilliant idea.  Let's use the galvanized wash tub as a target!!!  It's bigger and longer than a tin can, we don't have to stand so close to get a BB ricochet back at us AND the best part is.....nobody will know!  I don't know the exact number of holes my cousins and I pumped into that wash tub, but I do know there was more than 30 holes.  This type of juvenile logic is not unusual nor unexpected, since the group of us boys' were certainly two Corinthians shy of a bible at the time.

I can only fathom the volume of cuss words that came from our grandfather's mouth when he discovered what my cousins and I had done to his wash tub.  He didn't yell at us, call our parents or let anyone else in the family know what a handful of his grandson's had done that day.  Granddaddy took the tub into his garage where he pounded the holes flat and then soldered them shut on the inside vice the outside.  This method of repair left a small metal ridge over each BB hole and basically turned the bottom of the wash tub into a glorified cheese grader!

A few weeks later, my brother and I spent the weekend with our grandparents and the two of us had gotten really dirty from playing outside all day.  As was the routine, after dinner my brother and I went to the bedroom to get clean clothes while grandmother was heating up water for our bath.  I was the first one in the tub and as I slid my naked butt across the bottom, I had a sudden flash back in time to when my cousins and I shot that damn tub with our BB guns.  Oh, my God! I envisioned all the flesh on my butt being peeled back like a block of cedar cheese.  Why in heavens name did I pull such a stupid stunt!   My grandfather leaned over and whispered into my ear, "Now you know the pain your grandmother and I felt when I found these holes you boy's put in my tub.  You should be ashamed of yourself."  I would rather jump in front of a Grey Hound Bus than to disappoint my grandparents, but this was certainly one lesson that I've never forgotten.

We weren't troubled kids growing up....we were just kid's that were always in trouble!  We didn't need therapy, counseling or required to be on medication.  There was 32 of us little nose miners at the time and what one didn't think of, there were 6 others who were already gathering materials and putting the plan into effect.  We did get disciplined and it could come in the form of a switch from grandmother's peach tree, home made fly swatter, dad's belt, razor strap, wooden paddle ball paddle or a quick thump to the head from the middle finger of dad's hand.  We had what my young bride likes to call "a healthy respect for discipline."