My Memoirs

By Henry Streety

There is no available information at this time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781450002585

Book preview

1922 TO 1929

BABY YEARS

Three Year Olds Can Do Many Things

When Aunt Vera had a baby she had to have my mother, her sister, come be with her. I was three years old. I know that was my age because I am three years older than my cousin. My Aunt lived in Houston and she had to take me along because she had no one to leave me with

Just before we went to Houston to be with my aunt, I got exposed to whooping cough. They knew that I could not come near the baby so my uncle said he would look after me. He had a small grocery store with a meat market in it. My uncle’s idea of keeping a three year old entertained was to give him a butcher knife and let him cut pieces of meat for scraps. I don’t remember cutting my finger or stabbing anyone so I guess I did all right.

However, it was a week that my uncle never forgot. He remembered it when I reminded him after I got grown. He had to go to different places in town at times and he always took me with him. Our transportation was a Motel T Ford, open touring. I could get in and out anytime.

One day he took me along and left me in the car while he went in an office to do some business. Of course he was only going be gone a minute. It was 1925 and they were building the Houston ship channel. There was a viaduct over the excavation and he parked on the viaduct. I had not been there long when I saw the big machines digging the channel. I got out of the car and was squatting down looking through opening in the rails on the viaduct. When he came back he could not see me anywhere. I don’t know what all he did, but he had everyone looking for me, including the police. All he could see were those machines digging and the open spaces in the fence on the viaduct. After that I don’t recall him taking me with him again. Also, I learned to pull bananas off of the stalk, when I thought he wasn’t looking. As I say, three year old boys are not to be trusted.

Careful What You Say Around Your Kids

In 1922 my family was living in Taylor, Texas. Dad worked for the city and kept the fire burning that heated the boilers for making steam to run the steam engine that pumped water for the City of Taylor. Taylor was not a little town in 1922. I don’t know what the population was then but it was a railroad center for shipping cotton. It had several gins and a main street that wagons and cars filled up.

Taylor was my birth place in 1922. We live there for three weeks after I was borne. Dad lost his job when oil replaced coal for burning and the job became automated. At the urging of his dad he moved us to a small farm, owned by his dad. In reality I became the son of a sharecropper, which lasted for seventeen years.

My grandmother visited us out on the farm very often. She lived in a little town about a mile away. She came out to the farm just to hear me talk and show her around. I was about three years old on this occasion when I was showing her around. She was asking about everything, the cows, the pigs, etc. She finally came out with son how are the chickens doing? My reply was, Ma, the son’s o bitches won’t lay I don’t recall any visits from Grandma after that.

My Favorite Uncles

All my uncles were favorites. They treated me with kindness and respect and treated me as an adult. I liked them all and they had a great influence on my life. They all had a sense of humor and they would talk to me even though I was just a young kid.

Uncle Mack had an oil agency and sold kerosene, gasoline and oil to farmers by the barrel. He owned a gas station and sold gas to anybody in the community that owned a car. Incidentally gas sold for fourteen cents a gallon. When my dad bought gas at Uncle Mack’s station, I always pumped with the