Time, and Time Again: Times Now and Then, Then and Now

By Paul Brown

Life is an adventure, full of surprises day in and day out, month in and month out, year after year. Life brings joy, faith, pain, hope, despair, laughter, suffering, love, and hope. In Time, and Time Again, author Paul Brown shares a collection of stories from his life growing up during the 1950s to the 1970s.

Culled from Browns four earlier books in the Time series, the stories recapture his memories from childhood, through the teen years, to adulthood. The colorful narratives describe everything from his own adventures and emotions coming of age, to traveling to his grandmothers house for family events, to incidents and tragedies that shaped his memories. Time, and Time Again provides personal insights into the life and times of his extended family, including some eccentric relatives.

With humor and an eye for details about people, places, and events, Brown writes about a plethora of topics including the daily struggles of the previous generationfrom church, school, and social activities to battles with weather, insects, and crops to accidental deaths, disease, debt, alcohol, and cultural identifiers from Model T Fords to Jack Benny to Ozzie and Harriett. Time, and Time Again reminds us that time is a treasure that must be dearly held and cannot be replaced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480812598

Paul Brown

Paul Brown is the son of a lorry driver who left school at 16, and is now minister of a thriving church in Southwark, reaching out to predominantly working class communities. Paul has spoken on the relationship between the church and the white working class at conferences and churches and to different forums of community leaders and members of Parliament. Invisible Divides is his first book.

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Copyright © 2014 Paul Brown.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Photos and sketches are the property of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1258-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1260-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1259-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014918757

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/17/2014

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1     That’s a Story of the Past

Chapter 2     That Past Story

Chapter 3     Walk Toward the Music

Chapter 4     Walk toward the Light

Chapter 5     The Granny in the Sweater

Chapter 6     Cuming

Chapter 7     Soldier Boy Brothers

Chapter 8     Grandma’s Quilts

Chapter 9     All Aboard Grandpa’s Boat

Chapter 10   Saved Encounter

Chapter11   Attic Is Not All Clutter

Chapter 12   Auntie Ruby, Ever the Star

Chapter 13   Storm

Chapter 14   View Slider into Travel

Chapter 15   The Adventures and Travels of Colton, Teen Secret Agent

Chapter 16   Colton, Teen Secret Agent: Find the Parents

Chapter 17   Chance Meeting

Chapter 18   Camp Pocono

Chapter 19   Into the Washer

Chapter 20   Shared Sandwich

Chapter 21   Potato Chips

Chapter 22   The Kids’ Playmate

Chapter 23   Gone

Chapter24   Pocketful of Beads, Handful of String

Chapter 25   Boy on the Frankenstein Board

Chapter 26   Hope Always and Eternal

Chapter 27   The Lady in the Black Dress

Chapter 28   Next Door, Around the Block

Chapter 29   My Home Has a Motor

Chapter 30   The Lost Boy

Chapter 31   Passages through Time

Chapter 32   The Paper Boy

Dedicated to the author’s great-grandmothers:

Magdalene Martin Brown, married to Andrew Brown (Plantersville*, Texas)

Ursula Bachmayer Diehl, married to George Diehl Sr. (Plantersville, Texas)

Eugenia Wagner Diehl, married to George Diehl Sr. (Plantersville, Texas)

Ida Elsie Fleck Hill, married to Andrew Hill (Montgomery, Alabama)

Mary Schaller Hill, married to Andrew Hill (St. Louis, Missouri)

Grace Hill, married to Andrew Hill (St. Louis, Missouri)

Hanorah Martley O’Donnell, married to Charles O’Donnell (Cumming, Iowa)

And the author’s grandmothers:

Regina Diehl Brown, married to Paul Brown Sr. (Plantersville, Texas)

Shelby Cutrer Boutwell Brown, married to Paul Brown Sr. (Houston, Texas)

Teresa O’Donnell Hill, married to Oliver Wyatt Hill (Houston, Texas)

*Plantersville is located outside of Houston, Texas

Author’s Note

Once upon a time, there was time, and this is time and time again.

The following stories were written to recapture the author’s memories of childhood, memories of teen hood, and memories of adulthood.

Life is an adventure, full of surprises day in and day out, month in and month out, year after year. Life brings each and every one of us joy, faith, pain, hope, despair, laughter, suffering, love, and hope, and each day is to be taken one day at a time.

Time is to be treasured just as love is treasured, just as hope is treasured

Life is what you make of it, just as time is what you make of it. You must take the good time with the bad time, the bad with the good; so goes life. Each one of us experiences many of these in a lifetime.

Handle each experience with the understanding that experiences will only help you in life, somehow along the way, somewhere in your time in a day in your life.

Fate will always create distractions from the time you live and from what we each believe our routine goals of how time should proceed for us. The distractions are fate’s way of keeping each one of us living life in the time and place the event or activity in one’s life is actually intended to occur.

Take the time as time arrives and be thankful for each minute that you have to walk the earth. The place in time is now. Be thankful for each breath you are given.

Time is a treasure we must hold to dearly; time cannot be replaced. Time once spent is gone, just as the calendar cannot be turned back to years gone past. Time machines are possible inventions of the future, but only creative science fiction of the past and present. In our day and age of the present tense, time is not revisited except by recollections of the time spent.

Cherish the time you have with family and with friends, with school, work, church, organizations. Time in any part of your life evolves and changes, just as the tide flows in and flows out over the course of a day at the ocean side.

Youth dreams of turning of age to get a driver’s license or enter an establishment that is for those twenty-one and older. Parents dream of the day their children start to talk, to walk, and eventually to leave home. All of us look back over time already spent and wonder why we rushed through. We enter the years considered golden and think back about where the time flew away to.

Time, and Time Again ends the series of Time books by this author, and is actually a composite of stories extracted from the previous four books, which were originally published in paperback editions only.

Stories are a way to reconnect to the time spent, time enjoyed, and time participated in. This book tries to do such with stories along the years, through time.

The stories in this book are my own memories and recollections placed pen to paper or fingers to computer: memories of Magdalena Martin Braun (Brown), my paternal great-grandmother, a Russian immigrant of German heritage to the Houston area town Plantersville, Texas; Teresa (Terese) O’Donnell Hill, my Irish maternal grandmother and native of Cumming, Iowa.

The memories were also passed along time by my paternal grandmother Regina Diehl Brown, born in Navasota, Texas, to Russian immigrants of German descent who eventually settled in Plantersville, Texas; my paternal grandfather; Paul Brown, born on Westheimer Road on the then-family farm in what was considered Clodine, Texas, outside of Houston; Ruby Boutwell Martin, my paternal step-great aunt of Native American and French background; Oliver Wyatt Hill, my maternal grandfather, who earned his living employed by such Houston legends as Glen McCarthy and George Mitchell; and Shelby Boutwell Brown, my paternal step-grandmother. These stories also draw on recollections of Galveston from those who remembered the Great Storm of 1900 and growing up in Houston’s Oak Forest and Garden Oaks neighborhoods.

Time, and Time Again also includes reminiscences from the author, who grew up during the nineteen fifties, sixties, and seventies. These include memories of school, traveling to Grandma’s house for family events, special relatives, and incidents and tragedies that somehow stayed with me, etched into memory for life. I’ve included stories of travels to different states for family trips, usually to visit other relatives still in family homes passed down from an earlier generation, reaching back into the previous century. These visits brought me insights from another time, insights that were passed on as treasured memories by the ones who had lived those memories.

When I was growing up, relatives would often say that possessions might all somehow be lost, taken, or given away, but a memory is within your being. It will not be taken away by fire, hurricane, tornado, or financial ruin.

Elderly relatives often encouraged youngsters to sit down and talk with them, tell them their thoughts and ideas, their dreams. The youngsters thrived on the one-on-one attention, and would in turn be blessed with stories from these elderly relatives. These were stories of the relative’s earlier life, before he or she grew old. Of course, old to a youngster applied to anyone who was out of school.

Some stories told to me related to experiences in the Spanish-American War, World War I, and the era before aviation and automobiles changed the face of our country. My maternal grandmother would recollect one of her elders who was a veteran of the Civil War. Times long ago, yet not that far in the time line of life.

Stories bring back memories of what was and what will be good to cherish again later. Tales of lives and actions let you relive good times, learn from hard times, and keep memories alive in the spirit of earlier days. Stories are etched in your memory much the same way as an artist brushes paint across canvas to create a portrait. Time and time again.

Time gone, but revisited in the stories—stories that were written so that memories are still recorded for future generations. Time of what was once upon a time.

Once upon a time, there was time, and this is time, and time again.

1

That’s a Story of the Past

Magdalena was not going to let that wild beast get the best of her. No sir!

The rifle was pulled off the oak fireplace mantel from the large family room, in the modest wood-frame, white-painted house outside Angleton, Texas. The mantel had been a wedding gift from Maggie’s aunt Hilda, who ordered Maggie to take the mantel when the Bronfels migrated to Angleton.

You at least must have something pretty to look at in the room you will always be in, Aunt Hilda said. Hilda had the mantel in her barn. It was from Germany, shipped over when Hilda immigrated to the Texas island city of Galveston as a governess to a cotton manufacturing family. Hilda remained an old maid and was always Maggie’s lifeline, sent when she was in a crisis.

Hilda lived now in Plantersville, a small farming community outside of Houston, Texas, with two of her old-maid sisters, Katharina and Barbara.

At one time, Barbara had been a nun in an order comprised primarily of Irish nuns in the Texas coastal communities. Illness during her novice tenure forced her back home for good. Barbara was embittered about this expulsion and would forever keep herself from the entrance of any church. Barbara was one of the exceptions among those she had lived within the convent, being of German heritage, a Kraut, as the family would tease among themselves.

Katharina was sickly, always. Feeble, always. She never dated. Ever. The family took care of Katharina, nd her mind, though slow, was kind and cheerful. The three sisters fought like hens, but were best of friends. The bond among the three was thicker than water, as blood is thick and family is to be minded for a lifetime.

There were nine mouths to feed, not counting Andrew, Maggie’s hubby, and herself. That was eleven human beings to keep with vittles on the table at mealtimes. Maggie was a crack marksman; some family members and neighbors would speak of this ability and say Maggie was better than her other half, Andrew. There wasn’t anything Maggie wasn’t able to do if she put her mind to the notion of just doin’ it.

Lucille, Rosemary, Klara, Luise, Lars, Lukas, Gregor, Gunnar, and Jakob. This was the brood of Bronfels. Lucille was the eldest girl, and Lars the eldest of all.

Magdalena, known as Maggie to her friends and Ma to her brood of kids, was just as feisty as any of the women out in this swampy farm country. Maggie had a coop full of chickens, rice planted in the fields, and garden vegetables in the fenced-in area adjacent to the house. Lots of fruit trees too, which were just there when they bought the place. The mosquitoes were the biggest competitors for air space, as these flying pests could coat a body in seconds after a rain shower. The birds too were abundant, which helped get rid of many of the mosquitoes. Mosquito bites created a fear of disease among the farmers.

Russian-born Maggie was not going to let any critter take her crops or her chickens. She was seeing to that. Russian born, but of German heritage, Maggie was Jewish in her religious background on her mother’s side. The family became converts to the faith of the Holy Father in Rome—Roman Catholic.

Maggie had been taught that no one owed you anything. God provided you with everything that you would ever have in life only if you worked at it. And God might test you along the way. Handouts, charity, were not to be taken unless there was nothing else.

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Maggie as a young teen

Family was to help each other. Family was not only your spouse and your children and your parents, Maggie was taught, but aunts, uncles, cousins, and such. It was not charity if they needed help, but family. Church was the center of life on Sunday. Everyone had to attend. There could be no excuses. Sickness was almost unheard of. Mind and body were tough, and you could get through anything. Anything.

01Chapter12UsewithcaptionAndrewasyoungman.JPG

Andrew as a young man

Andrew, or Andy as his friends dubbed him, Pa to the Bronfel kids, was already tending to the rice fields once the sun rose. There was no spare time to doodle around in the mornings. The fire was lit upon the fireplace before dawn. Coffee was made, oatmeal warmed up, and a few slices of bread were cut from the loaf.

Then Andy was out in the fields with his mule, Ears. Ears were a good scout for water moccasins that so often plagued the farm, and also for the rattlers, corals, and copperheads. Ears sensed these vermin, sniffed them out somehow. He’d stomp a few into their graves daily, it seemed. Andy didn’t dare trek out to his eighty acres without Ears.

Maggie loaded the rifle, cocked it, and let loose with the first round at her target.

There’s one for you, you overgrown lizard! Maggie bellowed at the ten-foot alligator trying to break into her chicken coop that morning.

Alligators were a problem, and would sometimes prey on the easiest food.

Maggie’s stock of chickens, along with their eggs, kept food on the table. If nothing else, the family could eat. Eggs were served daily, as was chicken at dinner, unless pigs or coons or squirrels or possums were on the menu, which was often.

Maggie had one hound she kept outside, running the farm, and another mutt. Both were good watch dogs for gators that crept up to the Bronfels’ farm from the nearby bayou. The bayou provided a good source of water for irrigation, but was not much good for drinking. The family never gave the dogs official names as such, but always just yelled out Hound! and Mutt! Both dogs bounded for family when called as such.

Maggie pumped a few rounds one day into three gators that cornered the two dogs. Maggie heard the dogs howling. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was not right. The dogs never sounded as frightened as this howling. The two sensed Maggie’s bravery and were forever loyal companions to her.

Maggie had Andy dig a well early on when they bought the eighty acres for a chunk of change, their life savings in fact: just over $1.25 an acre in 1913. Cash was paid. Maggie had just delivered her last child, and was worn down from fighting mosquitoes, nursing cranky babies, and just the daily chores of living.

No electricity. No running water. Home was a wood-frame building constructed from lumber milled from pine off her dad’s farm in Plantersville and hauled by mule wagon all the way to Angleton. Her dad, Rolf, had given Maggie the lumber free, with one provision: as long as she had the acreage, he wanted to plow it up into cotton and peanuts, to be cleared by planting season. The lumber was cut by Andy in exchange for Maggie promising an extra dessert at super.

Maggie’s sister, Clodine, or Clo as she was called, pitched in since she was yet to bear a child at the age of twenty-nine and had a roving husband who never seemed to come home until he was good and ready. Except Sunday. She knew he’d be ready for services Sunday morning.

Everyone was poor. Everyone bartered. Everyone made do. Somehow. Nobody thought of themselves as poor. If you wore store-bought clothes, you were highfalutin. If you went into Houston just to visit, you were well traveled.

No one had anything, but everyone shared what little they did have. You were neighborly, because one crop failure could cause your family impoverishment until the following season.

Maggie had Andy chop the logs for the house. She had the kids move the logs to rows and clean off the bark. Two of Maggie’s kid brothers hauled it by mule wagon to cut the logs into lumber.

Maggie was good at delegating, and everyone listened. You didn’t cross her, or you would lose the battle. Andy learned this from day one.

Work. Lots of work. Maggie also had to keep tabs on her kids, cook three meals daily, and still tend to her chores of washing and housework.

You see, the move to Angleton was made because sharecropping time was over. Maggie and Andy had paid off their payment due to the Von Avels, who had lent money to the Bronfels from their general store over the years. From the date Andy and Maggie had said I do to the visiting priest in Plantersville in 1901, they were indebted. Almost everything the Bronfels made went to the Von Avels—until 1912.

1912 saw a bumper crop for the Bronfels. The twenty acres in Plantersville that Maggie and Andy worked at sharecropping had produced more food than ever. The excess produce was shipped by railroad to Houston to sell. Andy made $316, a sum that enabled him to pay off all debts. The money was also enough to answer a for-sale ad for a farm in Angleton: eighty acres for $1.25 an acre. One hundred bucks. Sold, to Andy and Maggie Bronfels.

Houston was growing in 1912 and had been since the 1900 Galveston storm. Someday Maggie dreamed of moving to a Houston neighborhood, the Heights. Maggie wanted a two-story, white, wood-framed home on the main boulevard.

Antone was Maggie’s kid brother. Antone was attached to his sister and promised her he’d haul all the lumber to Angleton, a mule wagon at a time, for her. His brother Nicholas would assist. Antone was sixteen, Nicholas was seventeen. Maggie was thirty.

Antone and Nick had yet to take wives, but were anticipating marrying the Pecholavek sisters, Erma and Gretchen, once they saved up some money for a small farm. The brothers decided they’d share the farm and expenses. Best to find wives that would get along. The Pecholavek sisters were only ten months apart in age, and were inseparable. A perfect match for the two brothers, who were also best friends and inseparable.

The brothers’ Russian-born dad, Rolf, was always in the fields. If not, he was repairing farm equipment or sorting out farm business to keep his widowed family provided for. Maggie was Mom to Antone and Nick; they’d do anything for her. Their mother died in childbirth.

Rolf had taken a widowed woman, Eugenia, as his wife. She bore him one daughter. Eugenia passed away three days after giving birth. The grieving Rolf was burdened with eleven kids and no wife. He took to the bottle each evening before crawling on the floor in front of the house’s main door.

The baby born to Eugenia, Marietta, was taken over to Gerda‘s house. Gerda was Rolf’s mother. Rolf wanted his new baby cared for, but did not have the means, the money, the time, or the heart to take this new gift from God.

Gerda was a good grandmother. She was an angel to all of Rolf’s children, and was a good source of affection. She always had a second for them. Gerda had two brothers who shared her home, working the fields as she tended house. Marietta would have a great life, and eventually be wealthy monetarily. Emotionally, she was always bitter about her detachment, in her mind only, from her siblings.

The Angleton farmhouse that Andy Bronfel built was solid. It had a large family room, serving everyone. This room was no more than fifteen by fifteen, but served the need. The room had a brick floor in the area adjacent to the fireplace, just in case sparks came out upon the floor.

Maggie and Andy got their own bedroom of similar size, with four windows. Sweat. Hard work.

Andy was a great craftsman and taught his boys. Even Jakob could carry nails or tools for him. Everyone had a task to do. Several farmers came over after Mass one Sunday and helped erect a barn for the Bronfels. They were forever grateful for this neighbors being neighbors action.

The other bedroom served all nine Bronfels kids: boys on the left side, girls on the right. Burlap bags served as dividers between the two sides. Five boys, four girls. Neither gender was allowed ever to cross the burlap bag. Each side of the divided room had one large bed in it. Siblings had to wrestle for a spot when bedtime came. Few lingered awake long, as night was lights out and bedtime for all.

Each half of the room had two large windows. These windows, as well as all of the windows in Maggie and Andy’s Angleton house, had screens. Screens kept out the flying pests, especially the mosquitoes. Andy’s bachelor uncle provided the screens from his wood shop. Joseph had never married, as his intentioned spouse, Bertha, was killed unexpectedly the evening before the wedding by a stray bullet to the head.

The bullet, intended for Bertha’s brother Angus, instead felled her. Joseph was forever in despair over this. He served the family in the role of babysitter and fund giver to all his siblings’ families, working every day, Monday through Saturday, twelve hours a day, in his woodworking shop. Joseph was wealthy in finances, but bankrupt in the heart.

Angus was an oddball, some said. Some said he was rabid. He died shortly after Bertha, felled by a jealous husband at the only tavern in town.

What else was the Angleton house like? The family dining room was one more fifteen by fifteen foot room, with shelves built along one wall. Another four large windows kept the room well lit, ventilated, and larger looking than its size.

There was no way to keep the house cool without windows. Lots of windows.

The walls in the house were lined with newspapers. This helped with insulation, keeping the hot air, cold air, and bugs out just a little bit better than not having the newspaper at all. Maggie intended this to be temporary. Her modest budget did not leave funds for wallpaper or even paint.

Maggie vowed she’d rid her house of the pest she despised the most: roaches. Maggie had heard that lizards ate the pests, and directed her kids never to hurt a lizard. Maggie mixed baking soda and sugar and put the mixture around the house. This was thought to eliminate the bugs.

Kitchen needs were met outside the four rooms of the house. The kitchen, built of brick walls and tin roofing, was a good twenty feet from the house. It had eight windows and measured twenty feet by twenty feet. Should fire break out there, the family might not lose the house.

Andy recalled that, as a small child in his Russian village, Monhim, a fire had broken out in the cooking area. The fire engulfed their entire home in seconds, almost killing his dad. Andy did not want this to occur again. The kitchen was away from the house.

The well stood guard between the house and kitchen, with a reservoir supplied by rain water, tanked in the event of fire. The tank also served on Saturday evenings at bath time. Saturday nights were mandatory bath nights. Soap had to be used. Soap in the hair too, to kill lice. There would be no dirty kids at church. There would be no smelly kids at church.

The tank reservoir resembled a huge wine barrel, the kids thought. Only lots bigger. Two water troughs were dragged in from the pasture Saturday evening by Ears and White Foot. The boys strung burlap bags along clotheslines, encircling the tub placed near the spigot of the tank. The girls did the same. This was a makeshift wash room. Andy saw to it his boys were clean. No dinner Saturday night was the punishment for dirt. Even behind the ears had to be cleaned. The girls went one step further: vanilla and lemon extract served as fragrances. Maggie checked her girls for hygiene. Boys and girls used corn starch mixed with baking soda for deodorant.

Bathroom needs were served by two outhouses. One was strictly for the women. Maggie in no way wanted to share a latrine with her husband or boys. Maggie also demanded this option for her girls. The girls’ outhouse was built of brick on the outside, wood lined on the inside, with a brick floor and one window.

Maggie wanted the floor to keep out as many pests as possible. There was a lantern available at all times inside the outhouse. Maggie ordered her charges to extinguish this lantern promptly after any visit. Failure to do so terminated the right to use the lantern until the guilty party’s next birthday.

Maggie had curtains put on the windows, and she was insistent that paper be stored in the outhouse. Soap was in a bucket next to the well. She demanded that everyone go to the well and wash hands after using the outhouse. Faces too. Maggie did not like dirt or sweat mixed on her kids’ faces. They bathed only on Saturday nights, but clean hands and faces were a must daily.

Maggie had the girls’ outhouse as close to the kitchen as possible. Twenty feet was the pace away from the kitchen. The path from the house to the kitchen to the outhouse was cleared of any weeds and bricked. Maggie did not want critters to scare her speechless at night if she had to chaperone one of her daughters.

The other outhouse was for the boys. This was not as fancy. Brick. No wood walls inside as the girls had. No floor. Dirt. The window was without a curtain. Paper? Let them remember to bring it from the house cupboard; otherwise they’d only waste it. This outhouse had no brick walkway and was forty feet away from the house.

Both outhouses were constructed so odor went windward, away from the family home. On hot, muggy days, the outhouses could cause smells not suitable for family noses.

Andy hollered to one of his boys to get outside quickly. Sometimes Andy lapsed into German when he got excited: Lars kommen aussen und hilf deinem vater sofort!

Lars Bronfel came to his dad’s rescue quickly. Lars was the eldest. Smart as a whip. Hardest worker. Lars was planning to leave home as soon as he was able. He was going to be a soldier. His gal, Eva, was in Plantersville. They’d marry once he saved several paychecks from the military, and she’d move to base with him. All planned.

He’d leave after harvest this year.

In the meantime, his ma and pa needed him to help with the farm and his eight siblings. He did so without any attitude, as he admired both of his parents. Lars knew Gregor and Gunnar could carry his load at home for him.

Pa, what’s up?

Son, look at these marks out here, these tracks. Looks like we’ve got some coyotes. Haven’t seen these tracks since we settled here. Saw deer tracks, but never coyotes. Andy went on a bit more. He was planning to shoot a deer and prepare it for tonight’s dinner. He thought Maggie would like something different. The deer would feed the whole family, and leftover meat could be dried out for jerky.

Lucille was walking toward the house with her sister, Rosemary. Both were coming back from school. School was two miles south, and a long walk. The family hound’s duty was to accompany the girls to and from school each day, to safeguard them from animals or anything else.

The girls tethered the hound outside school, a one-room building painted red and white. The hound snoozed in the shade, except at recess. The schoolkids played with the hound and loved to get him to retrieve sticks. The hound used his dog face to get lunch crumbs.

Lucille, who was called Red by the family, and Rosemary, who was called Cookie, had chores to do once they arrived at home.

Red had hair that color, with deep blue eyes and pale skin that had to be watched in the sun or burning would result. Cookie was blonde and pretty and had earned her nickname as a toddler by wrestling Red one day for a cookie. Red never forgot. Rosemary was labeled Cookie from that day forward.

Maggie delegated the tree-picking chores to the two sisters. Apples, peaches, pears, figs, lemons, and limes all grew on the farm, mostly near the farmhouse. Most of the trees had been planted by earlier owners, and the fruit harvested could feed the family when jarred as preserves. Maggie sent the girls to Angleton by mule wagon with excess produce. An exchange at the general store in town provided flour, sugar, rice, and dried beans for Maggie. The burlap bags that the dried items came in provided clothes for the family. Red and Cookie were also allowed on each trip to get one special item apiece for their work.

Red loved to draw and would buy pretty tablets. Cookie loved to sew, and bought different colors of threads and buttons. Her material was burlap. She was determined to one day buy store-bought material and make everyone clothes that did not have a food label displayed.

Red had a knack for drawing dress designs, and the sisters vowed to be seamstresses when they grew up.

Gregor and Gunnar were not at school. They were homeschooled. Andy needed the two boys to help tend fields. The two awakened with Andy each morning and eat breakfast with their dad. Once it was light outside, they practiced reading and writing for two hours while their father did his early chores. Andy would come back into the farmhouse and expect the boys to read to him and to display their penmanship. Then the boys went to the field with Andy once the three had eaten biscuits and eggs and milk.

Gregor and Gunnar were both quick learners. Reading. Writing. Arithmetic. These came easily to them.

Andy did not know how to read or to write in English. Neither did Maggie, for that matter. Andy and Maggie could speak Russian and German fluently, write Russian, and manage to write in misspelled German. They spoke English with thick accents.

Andy and Maggie wanted better for their kids. No Russian or German was spoken at home. The parents must set the example, they thought. The kids had to be able to write English to get ahead in life. No accent for their kids, either. The Bronfel kids were scolded if they did not enunciate their words. Punishment meant writing over and over the word not enunciated correctly.

The Bronfels even considered a name change, to something more American, but had yet to vote on a new name all could wear with their first names proudly.

The Angleton farm provided a living. The Bronfels were not educated in Gulf coast geography. They only wanted a home to provide subsistence for their family. A home in which to raise their kids in the faith they shared with the community every Sunday. The Bronfels were not ready to deal with Mother Nature and what fury she could deal.

The Bronfels had no radio. The radio was a new device but not among the family possessions. No television. It was not invented. Newspapers served the communication needs of country folk, and the news was most likely be in the past tense or about agricultural requirements. Andy bought a Russian-language newspaper in town on occasion. Old news was new news for them.

The Bronfels’ Angleton farm, with fields of rice and sugar, with the garden of vegetables for family consumption, with chickens and cows—hurricanes can wreak destruction on such farms. Farms are in hurricane paths too.

The first indication came on Sunday afternoon. The preceding day had already been rough. Gregor had pranked his sisters: he threw three dead snakes into their room when they were asleep. Though the dead snakes were on the floor, and dead, the startled sisters screamed bloodcurdling screams. Maggie thought one of them was dead or dying. Upon entry into the girls’ half of the room, she herself went into hysteria. Andy raced into the room and immediately understood what the commotion was when he saw the dead snakes.

Gregor’s punishment was to be tethered to the tree out behind the house for the day. The family mutt was tied near him, to ward off any possible predator, and the family went about its business without worrying about Gregor.

Gunnar was not going to let his brother suffer. He stayed within earshot all day in the fields, so he could rescue his brother if needed. Maggie said it would learn him a lesson. Next time she threatened to feed him to the gators.

Sunday morning the family hitched up the mule wagon for the ride to Saint Nicholas’s in Angleton. It was eight miles round-trip, and meant eating potluck dinner on the church grounds after Mass. Under the shade trees.

Ears was the lead mule, but Pa knew that he would need the other mule to assist in pulling the wagon. White Foot was the other mule. He was stubborn, unfriendly, and would kick. However, Ears favored him, and White Foot was almost as good as Ears in watching for vermin. He also favored Maggie, the only family member White Foot would listen to. Maggie somehow was as ornery as White Foot, so they were soul mates.

Maggie prepared everything the night before church. Fried chicken. Boiled rice. Pies. Garden vegetables, which normally were potatoes and tomatoes and okra and cucumbers and watermelon. The women at church looked to Maggie’s cooking and her fresh produce. Maggie was also giving, and though they had no money, she told Andy that the Lord had given them food in abundance. They always shared on Sunday and provided families in need with food. Maggie brought enough to feed half the congregation of over one hundred, it seemed. With surplus food still for some families to take home.

Edna Gruene and Malinda Rosemuter said Maggie was their idol. She could tend her kids, manage her husband, cook the best food, sew burlap outfits that still looked decent, and was never without a smile and good humor. Andy said of his Maggie that she was his apple pie dough, and Maggie referred to Andy as her old man farmer.

Andy somehow didn’t appear as aged as most of the farmers, worn down from the sun’s exposure and hard life. He didn’t look much older than his eldest son, Lars, most people said. He too was cheerful and smiling, and didn’t let things get him down. His philosophy was that of Maggie: Take the day as it is given to you. You are blessed to be given anything.

Maggie likewise didn’t look as though she had borne all of those kids and worked day and night. Though attired in their Sunday go to meeting clothes, they still were visibly poor folk. Simple. Down to earth. Humble. God fearing. Maggie wore her hair down long on Sundays, to her waist. Brown hair. Brown eyes. The rest of the week the hair was pinned atop her head, with a scarf to hide the hair from heat.

Andy and Maggie were mindful of their Russian childhoods: bleak, cold winters, food scarcity, disease, and deaths among friends and family because of the dire conditions. Anything was better here in Angleton than those dark days in the old country. Both felt blessed to be in this great land and to have been given at least family, food, and freedoms.

Maggie was sought by younger mothers for her advice. Many young mothers could not handle the hardships of living out on the farms. Maggie gave them courage.

Andy was one who somehow was good at anything he tried. Woodwork, farming—he just had a knack for it. The younger husbands sought him out for advice as well. After Mass, the kids played, the food was placed on wooden tables, and the women swapped stories, as did the men. The elderly played cards or dominoes, and everyone socialized. This was the only day of the week when these families did not spend every waking second working.

Andy chatted with the younger men about farming tips, woodworking, and vermin control. He spun tales out of each helpful hint he professed to know, and the young men stood spellbound, listening. Times were hard, and though Andy was old in the eyes of the younger farmers, who often were married and dads and farming by eighteen.

This particular Sunday, clouds started forming in the sky. Not unusual for July in Texas.

It was hot. But clouds helped with the heat.

Families decided that they better start getting on home, before too much rain. Roads were dirt. The wagons sometimes got bogged down in ruts. Kids got cranky.

The Bronfels gave Ears and White Foot some food and water, and coerced the two mules into their hitches. Neither mule needed to be led by any reins. Neither mule would walk fast. Both mules knew the direction of the Bronfels’ farm. The family would make it home eventually.

The hound and mutt had also come along for the day. Both always got some sort of treats from the after-church potluck.

Once the family got home from the church gathering, the wind picked up violently. The windows were all secured so the rain water would not blow in. Candles were located, and the fireplace in the family room, used to warm food and drink, or for heat and light, was lit.

Maggie had only one good piece of furniture. Every other piece that somehow materialized in the Bronfel home had been made by Uncle Joseph or Andy. The one exception came from Maggie’s grandmother, Katie, who was born in Germany. She had a large wardrobe, almost too large to transport. Antone and Wilhelm had brought the wardrobe to Maggie in Angleton as the only item on a mule wagon. The wheels on the wagon could hardly bear the weight of this wardrobe, but they wanted Maggie to have it. It was the only item left of any value from what the family had brought from the old country. Katie had been well off in Germany, and had brought over many valuables. Katie married in Texas, and gradually sold off most possessions to keep her children fed and clothed after her husband Otto died. The wardrobe was all that she had of significance upon her death. Katie bequeathed it to Maggie as the eldest granddaughter and the favorite.

The wardrobe monopolized Andy and Maggie’s bedroom. There was room for little else except their bed.

The chickens and roosters could be heard in the coop. The hound and mutt were unusually loud. Andy went out to the small barn, about one hundred feet from the house, to get Ears and White Foot inside with the family’s three cows. Mane, the horse used more as pet than laborer, was also put into the barn. The tin-roofed structure held food reserves, hay, and farm implements the Bronfels used.

Sunday evening gave way to darkness. Quiet. The wind stopped. The rain stopped. The animals stopped their noises. Everything was still, and Maggie and Andy believed that the bad weather was over.

Lars and Andy took the kids, two by two, to the outhouse. They were told to take care of business or hold it. Maggie went out after her family was through, and also went by her kitchen to bring food in to eat. The family would have to dine on what was easiest.

Maggie had always been one to bake daily except on Sunday. This saved her today. She had baked so much on Saturday, she had ample. Since there was no refrigeration, spoiled food was thrown outside, far from the house to avoid vermin.

Red and Cookie knew their mom could use a hand. The two sisters ran out to the kitchen and helped carry food into the dining room. Three apple pies were still left. Two jars of fig preserves, boiled rice, eight loaves of bread.

There were lots of eggs, and Maggie thought these could be prepared if need be over the fireplace. Maggie also had made vegetable stew. That would get them through dinner and breakfast, and then things would be back to normal.

The thunder started booming in the distance. The house was rattled by the sound. Lightning was streaking across the sky, as they could see from the windows. Maggie ordered that the wood shutters, crafted for the dining room windows by Uncle Joseph, be secured quickly.

Andy ordered all kids into the dining room. The candles were carried in. Maggie and Andy’s room was immediately adjacent to the dining room, and one of three doors off the dining room led to the master bedroom. Another door led to the family room, and the third opened to the outside. The fire was put out in the fireplace.

Lars heard noises outside he didn’t like. The wraparound wooden porch, four feet off the ground, was being hit by debris. Sounded like trees. The tin roof, which had cost the family fifty-three dollars alone, was shaking so badly it sounded like it was coming loose from the house. Popping sounds too could be heard: big hailstones.

Maggie was the first to see something she didn’t like at all: the dining room floor had water oozing out from the wooden planks. First it was drops only, then more. The tin roof ripped off the house, and the sounds it made were frightening to the kids. Water poured in, hailstones striking family members like rocks from an avalanche.

Maggie took notice of one item that she thought was sturdy: the wardrobe. It stood off the floor on legs that were two feet long. The shelves were designed to come out for transport. Maggie pulled all the