Visiting Junior.  June 2013

 

Jerry and I had a good visit with my brother Wilburn, Jr. last night. He is the oldest of us siblings and I need to find out all I can about family stuff before he is no longer here. I learned a few things that I didn't know. Mom and dad moved to the community of Kelsey in 1942, a year before I was born. They lived with my Tefteller grandparents when they were first married for a short while. They then lived in two other places around the area before moving to Kelsey. A man from Dallas had bought the place with a dairy on it from somebody. He tried running a dairy but the cows all got sick and it didn't work out for him. Daddy was looking for a place to buy and he heard about this place and went and told the man that he would like to buy it. The man agreed and sold it to Daddy and the rest, as they say, is history. This place was on the south side of the road. A little bit later he bought the land across the road that had a house on it and Granny and Papa Tefteller moved into this house. They lived across the road from us almost all of my growing up years. It was fun having granny so near because she loved to play games and baked delicious cookies and fried pies. All our cousins came to her house all the time and we all played in Granny's front yard. Years later he bought a place with a house on it back of where Katherine lives now. Granny and Papa  moved into it at some point and they were living there when PaPa got cancer and died. I don't know how Daddy afforded to buy all this but he was quite an enterprising man. He built a syrup mill at this place and made syrup for awhile. He also built more chicken and turkey houses there. He also had a milk delivery route that he sold his own milk on. Sure wish I has one of his milk bottles and labels.

 

I thought daddy didn't go very far in school but Junior said he went through the 10th grade. He had two pair of pants that were worn out. They didn't have money to buy more so he didn't go back to school. They only had eleven grades at that time.

 

Anyway they moved to Kelsey in 1942 and into the small house down back in 1946 while the new house was being built. So I was three years old at the time we moved. Junior said it took a year to build the new house which included digging out the basement part and cementing it before the rest could be started. Daddy did a big part of the work himself. The little house down back had no indoor plumbing or electricity in it. Thank goodness I was too young at the time to know what we were missing.

 

Uncle Johnny

 

My mother had a brother named Johnny and I remember knowing him but can't remember much about him. I thought he had been married at one time but he was not married when I knew him. Junior told me this about him. Now it seems that Uncle Johnny was a womanizer. A certain husband came home early one day and caught Uncle Johnny with his wife and was going to kill him. With not a stitch of clothes on Johnny jumped out the window. He knew a family with young men around

his age living around there so he managed to get to their house through the backwoods without being seen. They gave him some clothes to put on. Anyway, this woman got a divorce later on and Uncle Johnny married her. She was called Barefoot Sue because she went around town barefoot selling something to get money. Junior told me what she sold but now I can't remember what it was. It wasn't long before Johnny knew he had made a mistake and they didn't stay together. Uncle Johnny made his living farming and died at about the age of forty of complications from surgery.