| "When I was 5,
Mother taught school again (after having been a
teacher before Beryl was born) and I went with her
every day. In order to keep me busy, I also took
part in the class" although at the time, children didn't
start school until age 7. "When I did
start to school, at 7 years old, I knew too much for the
first grade, so my teacher (my Mother), had to promote
me at the beginning. By that time
there was a school house for us - not a building used
for church services. It was 'Weaver School'
and Mother was the principal. Sometimes we
went in a kind of cart with a horse but most of the time
Daddy drove us in the car. We got our first
car about that time....it wasn't a new one.
It was called an "overland". They would put
me in the back seat and cover me up until they got the
fire going at school and, then, they'd bring me in
because it was so cold.
"We had books but not
a big bunch of them. About all the supplies
we had were just a pencil and a tablet. We
had a blackboard, too. I was left-handed and
Mother would always encourage me to write with whichever
hand I picked up the pencil but when I went into the
fourth grade, I had to go to the Post School (we
actually lived in that community) and that teacher
wouldn't let me use my left hand. She made
me write right handed which made me feel cramped and not
natural. Everything else I did was left
handed."
"Our collie dog,
Ted, and I grew up together. We got him when
I was 6 months old and he was about 6 weeks old.
No matter which room I slept in, he would always sleep
under that window. Once when I was
just beginning to walk, Mother was outside cleaning the
chicken house. She thought she was keeping
an eye on me but suddenly realized I was gone.
'Ted, where's the baby?' she asked him. But he
would only go as far as the tank dam . . which scared
her to death. Neighbors and family members
dragged the tank dam because they were afraid I was in
it. After a long period of time, Mr. Perry
who lived across the dam from us, came carrying me in."
This was the great-grandfather of Texas Governor Rick
Perry. He said the dog kept barking so
he checked and found the baby walking almost to their
house. There was only one way to cross the
tank dam - a narrow road.
"I remember my
grandfather, William Welch (father of her mother,
Olive E. Welch Montgomery), was a big story teller.
We called him "Father". He could have
written books and made them so interesting.
I wish I had saved his letters written to me when I was
a teenager. One told of how his mother
took him to see a neighbor's baby girl. He
said her head was so small it could fit into a teacup.
She was Louise Elizabeth Bradshaw and when she grew up,
he married her. One Christmas, I gave him a
dictionary as a gift. I probably paid a
quarter for it. He wrote me another letter,
thanking me and telling how much it helped....and he
misspelled every word he could, didn't put any capitals,
and no punctuation...showing how much it had helped.
"We had a wood
stove when I was younger. It had a reservoir
on one end where you could have hot water, then you had
a fire in the stove. Before they got an
electric stove, they had a gasoline one. You'd
have to pump it up and it had to have air in it.
Daddy and Roy Overton wired so many of the houses in the
community with electricity - they passed in the
inspection and everything. Mother said if
they went to town, they'd come home and turn on a switch
to see if the electricity had come in. They
were so excited when they finally got electricity!"
"When we lived on
the farm, Mother and Daddy usually got up before I did.
When school was going on, we got up about 5:00 in the
morning. We usually had cream or red gravy
and some kind of meat. Sometimes we had eggs but a
lot of the time we just had biscuits. Mother
tried to keep light bread for our sandwiches at school.
In the summertime, she had the yeast that she kept in
the ice box and she'd make hot rolls every day.
They were really good. We had a man who
delivered ice for the ice box twice a week.
"At Christmas, we
always had a tree. It had candles on it but very
seldom would we light them because we were afraid of
fire. When we would go to a church program
or somewhere, I'd write Santy a note because I was so
afraid he would come while I was gone. One
year I wanted a wagon real bad. Of course,
Mother and Daddy had had it down in the barn for a long
time."
After graduating
from Haskell High School at age 16, Beryl eventually
attended beauty school in Abilene. When she
passed the state exam, she first worked in Winters,
Texas, then in a shop in Haskell and later went to
Abilene to work in a shop for about 3 years.
There she met and married Elvin Boyd Cathey in 1938.
"It was July 2, 1938, and Frances (her friend Frances
English Wilson) had worked that day so she just
barely got there to get dressed before the wedding.
Brother Hammer was going to do the ceremony. The
only ones invited to attend were Aunt Grace and Uncle
Howard (Montgomery), Edith and Father (William Welch).
Mozelle sang and the Hammer daughter played the piano.
The minister and his wife were there and that was all.
Sid Horton was the best man. Frances was
eating chicken until nearly time for the wedding.
We got married about 7 PM on a Saturday.
Afterwards, the 4 of us went to Haskell and to the show.
Then we took Frances home and went on back to Abilene.
It was about 2:00 AM before we got to bed."
Beryl and Boyd lived in
San Angelo and Anson, Texas, then went to California and, after Boyd was called into the service,
they lived in Phoenix, Arizona.
They returned to Texas in 1946 living in Dallas, Grand
Prairie and Mesquite. They were married for
a very happy 55 years. Boyd died
on July 21, 1993, and was buried in Willow Cemetery in
Haskell. Beryl celebrated her 90th birthday in
July 2006 with a big party attended by friends and
relatives from California to Georgia.
She died peacefully on December 11, 2006, and was buried
beside Boyd at Willow Cemetery in Haskell.
©Elizabeth Cathey Maxson |
