Henry's Story: That's How I Learned That

By Charlene Venable

I met Henry Jackson at the Farmers Market in Kilgore, Texas. I was selling my hand-painted rocks for gas money, and Henry was selling his home grown black-eyed peas and watermelons off of the back of his truck. Friendly and careful, he meandered over to my fold-out table with my painted rocks warming up in the hot East Texas sun. It was already over ninety degrees and it hadnt hit ten oclock yet. We chit-chatted about the heat, East Texas, the produce that was lined up on the sidewalk near the oil derricks, and watched only a few people go by. I told him that I moved up here from Houston, and was out of a job like so many other people, and that I thought East Texas was the most beautiful place on the planet. Everything grows here. If there is one tiny crack in the sidewalk, there will be something green growing in no time. Vines covered every fence and most trees. Trees are everywhere, and strangers smile and wave as they go by. My heart and my family live in East Texas, and I just wanted to come home and so I did. Henry shook his head in agreement and began to tell me his story. He was born in East Texas, the second from the youngest of eight girls and six boys. I told him he should write these stories down. He said he didnt write much. I paused for a moment and replied, I do. Over the next two years, I learned Henry's Story,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466978126

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Henry’s Story

THAT’S HOW I LEARNED THAT

CHARLENE VENABLE

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© Copyright 2013 Charlene Venable.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4669-7813-3 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-7812-6 (e)

Trafford rev. 03/11/2013

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Contents

Foreword

Chicken Feather

Big Feather Bed

Boys And Girls Learned The Same

Kit And Kate

I Helped Daddy Dig The Well

Hog Slaughter

We All Had Chickens And Ducks

Tiger

Watermelons And Fishing

Because Of Ol’ Duncan, We Learned To Drive

White Man Named Tate

Riding The Brahmas

My Daddy Had Nine Head

Our Brother Died

They Don’t Even Know They Are Greedy

Tate Had A Son

Horseshoe Bend Creek

Happy Parker

Parker Had A Son

Where There’s A Will, There’s A Gun

Daddy Dipped Snuff

The Sickle, Mamma, Kerosene, And Casts

Joe Started It, I Finished It

Even The Baby Didn’t Get Babied

The Wart Cure

Grandma Forest Clamp And Honey

I Plant By The Almanac

Wild Hogs

The Prophet

When You Gonna Fix My Car?

Didn’t Go To School Much

I Never Had $5 Before

The Badger

Arizona

Big Man And The Gambling Shack

Little Man With A Pistol

Popago Indians

Cactus Jelly, Gila Monsters, And Tarantulas

Grandma And The Buffalo Rifle

Mama Bobcat

Javelina Hogs

Powwow And The Ninety-Year-Old

Alahon And Me

Guitar Man

Have I Got A Deal For You

Going Home

Germany, Then Viet Nam Basic Training

In Vietnam

The Mountain Yard People

On The Way Back From Vietnam

Almost Unbearable

Sarah

West Texas

Certified

Dunk The Cop

Turkey Hunt

Midnight

Gumption The Raccoon

Friends From Taiwan

He Got Shot In The Swing

Street Named After Me

The Biggest Concrete Swimming Pool In

The World

Liquid Glass

Ducks, Ducks Everywhere

Single Parents Called Me

Hundred Dollar Ride In The Country

The Rattler With No Rattle

Rattlesnake Roundup

The Only Black Sheriff

The Woman In The Black Car

I’ve Had A Few Dogs

I Was The First VFW Commander

Halloween Fundraisers

Motorcycles

Selling A Trike With His Dying Breath

The Motorcycle, Jerky, And Sausage

Kilgore College Police

Cedar Top And New Town

The Old Black School Is Still Standing

FOREWORD

I met Henry Jackson at the Farmer’s Market in Kilgore, Texas. I was selling my hand-painted rocks, and Henry was selling his home grown black-eyed peas and watermelons off of the back of his truck. Friendly and careful, he meandered over to my fold-out table with my painted rocks warming up in the hot East Texas sun. It was already over ninety degrees and it hadn’t hit ten o’clock yet. We chit-chatted about the heat, East Texas, the produce that was lined up on the sidewalk near the oil derricks, and watched only a few people go by. I told him that I moved up here from Houston, and I thought East Texas was the most beautiful place on the planet. Everything grows here. If there is one tiny crack in the sidewalk, there will be something green growing in no time. Vines covered every fence and most trees. Trees are everywhere, and strangers smile and wave as they go by. Henry shook his head in agreement and began to tell me his story. I told him he should write his story. He said he didn’t write much, so I told him that I would write his story for him. That’s how I learned Henry’s Story.

CHICKEN FEATHER

I was born on a little farm between Oak Hill and Henderson, Texas in a settlement called Chicken Feather. All of our neighbors were white. We didn’t have electricity, so an ice man would come to the house and put a big block of ice in the ice box. We had cards with numbers on it that hung on the ice box. That told the ice man how much we wanted to buy. He would come in the house, read the card, and leave the ice. Doors were never locked. If we weren’t home and the neighbors needed something like sugar, they would leave a note saying they had been there. Back then we never locked the house.

My mom and dad were very religious. My dad was a deacon. We always blessed the food and mom read to us from the Bible. We always went to church every Sunday in the wagon. We went to a church where all the members were black. It was several miles away from where we lived.

My dad was a hard-working sharecropper. He was so honest that he could handshake on a deal, and others would take him at his word. He would go to the store and get seed just at his word. We grew corn, cotton, peas, and black diamond watermelons. Sometimes our watermelons weighed up to sixty pounds. Around the creek we grew sugar cane. It had to have lots of water, you know. From the sugar cane we could make syrup. My daddy could grow the best produce. People from all around would ask him how he got his vegetables to grow so big.

My momma was a small woman, no more than 110 pounds. She was my daddy’s right hand. She might be a little light to do it, but she tried. My momma helped him do everything. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Henry%27s%20Daddy%20and%20Momma.jpg

Henry’s Daddy and Momma

BIG FEATHER BED

My momma had a feather bed that was high up off the floor. The headboard was made of iron. There wasn’t no wood on it. Of course, there was a lot of iron beds back them.

When I was too small to walk, my momma would put me on the big feather bed to keep me out of trouble. I wanted off, so I would try to get down. I can remember trying to get down and I couldn’t reach the floor, so I would just hang on and turn loose, then fall on the floor. One time my momma happened to be looking when I was trying to get off of the bed, and I was hanging down ’cause I couldn’t reach the floor. She would say, You gonna’ hurt yourself if you try to get off. I remember the smile in her voice. Soon enough, I learned how to get off that big feather bed.

BOYS AND GIRLS

LEARNED THE SAME

Henry%27s%20Sisters%20Laura%2c%20Martha%2c%20Lois.jpg

Henry’s Sisters Laura, Martha, Lois

Now my momma thought that boys should learn to do everything the girl’s could do. Us kids had to do chores. We had to cut wood and stack it on the porch. We had a wooden rack to hold it. We also fed the hogs and chickens, milked the cows, and fed the mules. We had a wood stove and a fireplace to cook on. We churned butter, and put up preserves. One day she would teach the boys to cook and the next day she would teach the girls. I liked everything she was teachin’ us ’cause I liked to learn. I had a birthday comin’ up and momma asked me, How would you like to cook your own cake? She showed me how to make the dough and everything for the cake. I liked pineapple, so we put pineapple on the top and in the middle of the layers. Momma poured it on the top and let it run down the sides. So when it came time to eat supper, we made a fire outdoors, and roasted weenies by putting them on a stick and holding them over the fire. So for supper we had a weenie roast with pineapple birthday cake for dessert. And that’s how I learned to do all that.

KIT AND KATE

We had two mules, one was Kit and the other was Kate. We used the mules to farm. When we were finished with mules for the weekend, Sunday, we would turn the mules loose in the pasture, and they would stay there until Monday morning when we would go get them to work. When we would go to get them early in the morning, they would run. They would run a long time before we could catch them. Sometimes we would get a strappin’ because daddy thought we were goofin’ off. One Monday morning we went to get the mules out of the pasture, and they ran for an hour before they would let us catch them. My brother, Earl the trouble maker, would go with us to get the mules. We didn’t have a saddle or anything, so we would just get on the mules and ride them back. He was mad because the mules wouldn’t stop running. Finally when they stopped running, he got on the mule called Kit. He made her run and run. She ran under a low branch to knock him off, but when he ducked down she started to buck and he fell off, but his foot got caught in the rope that he was using for a bridle. Kit started running fast and she dragged him a long way through the bushes and across the grass. His back was green. She finally stopped. He wasn’t hurt, but he was real mad. He got back on her and made her run out of the pasture and down the road back to the house. We laughed practically all day, and my brother was mad all day ’cause we was laughing.

The next Monday morning when we went after them again, my brother wasn’t with us this time. We had to run after them for a time, but not as much as the time before. This time I was gonna ride Kit back to the house. I thought about what Kit had done to my brother, so I wouldn’t let her get under no trees or nothing like that. But on the way back, Kit was trottin’ along real good, and all of a sudden she began to get close to the ditch that ran along the dirt road. I noticed that she was running faster like she did my brother, and she throwed me off in the ditch, so I started walking her back down the road. My daddy happened to be on the road and saw her throw me. So he said, Get back on Kit! So I got back on her and run her to the house. Kit was tricky, she would buck when you weren’t expecting it.

Kate had never been rode, she never had been broke. We didn’t try to ride her, we just always walked her up the road. This particular Monday morning the two mules were running as usual. My trouble maker brother was with us that day. He decided that he would try to ride Kate back to the house. We told him he better not, because we never rode Kate before.

He said, Ah, I think she gonna do alright. And he got on her bare back and Kate just stood there.

We said, Well you better watch her.

Kate put her ears straight back and we knew she was about to run. She leaped up in the air like a buckin’ bronk. He rode her for a while, but he finally hit the ground pretty hard. He had a couple of knots on his head. Earl would just do things like that. He would do things even when he knew he would get a strappin’ for it. We never could figure out why he would just do things he shouldn’t oughta. He never learned.

I HELPED DADDY

DIG THE WELL

I helped Daddy dig the well more than the other boys. The older boys would farm with the mules, because they was older than me. All of us couldn’t do that at our age so we would do what we could do for our age. I wasn’t old enough, so I helped Daddy. I was down in the well digging and daddy was drawing the mud and dirt out of the well. When I could see the water seepin’ in there and get about waist deep, I would get out of there ’cause it would fill up.

My daddy dug a ninety foot deep well where we hung the butter we made from the milk we got from Tate’s cows. Mother would put the butter in the bucket and roll it down to the water where it stayed cold enough to keep. The ninety foot well was dug before I was born, and my brothers helped him. He dug another well for a neighbor and I helped my daddy dig it. I was the one that was down in the well diggin’. Somebody had to stay up on top and pull the bucket of dirt up. There’s a big pole that you tie the rope around. It had a handle on it that hoisted the bucket up to the top so daddy could dump the dirt out and send it back down to me. We did that until we got the well dug. And that’s how we did that.

HOG SLAUGHTER

We would feed the hogs shorts and corn. Shorts is a hog feed that was a kind of wheat that you had to add water to. We also fed them over ripe watermelon and bad vegetables. We fed watermelon rinds to the mules and chickens.

We always raised twenty-five or thirty hogs, but would butcher at least three hogs. Daddy made a smoke house years before I was born. He would cut the meat, and we would make sausage and pack it in the guts (intestines). The intestines were about eighteen to twenty inches long, and we would hang them in the smoke house. We had a pole in there and nails in the pole where we would hang them up. My daddy would sugar cure it. He would put hickory or oak chips in a little place where it would smoke. Every night