Nihilist Cowboy

A Sick Man, A Spiteful Man, An Unattractive Man
2021-02-15 01:38:45 (UTC)

A Story of Unsung Heroes of Old Texas

It is freezing around here, they are saying record low temperatures and 6-8 inches of snow. The only time I have seen more snow was on a vacation with my dad. As I am looking outside my window, I see a light dusting of snow while the roads and the rooves of the other houses are covered in a thick layer of ice. Because of our crappy electric company, I am already preparing for the lights to be out for days. This whole situation is going to suck because the house is underinsulated and the natural gas heater has been out for 10 years now, so once the electric fireplace goes out, it is going to be cold. The low tomorrow is 5 degrees; I have never experienced any even remotely close to that cold. I have realized I am very fortunate that power outages are only 4 or 5 times a year tops. Just 100 years ago, having electricity out here was not possible. In fact, the heat came from fireplaces, the bathroom was an outside in the back, and when it gets 100 degrees in the middle of August, you did not have the ability to turn on the AC; you would just be miserable in inescapable heat.

My maternal grandmother, my Nana told me stories of her childhood a year before she went into the nursing home when she started to lose her memory. She was born in 1937 on a sharecropping farm about 60 miles to the north of my hometown in the next county over. Her early childhood was rough, her father died when she was a month old. Her mom raised her and her older sister while harvesting cotton on other farms and working as the cook in the elementary school that was a few miles down the road from the farm. Nana's childhood home did not have running water or electricity and did not get electricity until she was in high school in the late 40s early 50s. She never became close to either her mother or her older sister due to both of them constantly working. In the heat of the summer, there was no reprieve from the scorching Texas sun during the summer; just open the window and make due. After a hard day at work, there were no hot baths, they would by putting water in a washpan and giving themselves some sort of spongebath. Imagine trying to bath like this on the front porch in the middle of winter. Nana's mother would have to wash close in a wash basin and then hang the line outside. This life was hard. Other parts of the country already had running water and electricity long before the farmlands in rural East Texas. In fact, Granny would always tell the story of sitting in the bathtub listening to the radio when she found out about Pearl Harbor. Granny was originally from the Texas Hill Country, but her family moved to East Texas in the year 1940. Her middle class life was in stark contrast to what Nana faced, although Granny had a very hard life as well.

At the age of 18, Nana graduated from high school and left her community for the very first time and took the bus to Dallas. She never talked about this time in her life, but a few years later she met my grandfather who also moved to Dallas from a farming community near Wichita Falls. They were married a few years, had my mother and then he ducked out. Nana being a single mother working a minimum wage job as a nurse aide meant she had to live in a not so good part of town. In the late 1960s, there were riots in the schools and the neighborhoods from people being angry over school integration (I imagine these people are the same exact kind of folk that want to discriminate against gay people, want "religious freedom," and dont wear masks in the middle of a pandemic). Due to the craziness, Nana once again packed up and moved back to East Texas.

One of the last stories that Nana told me before losing her memory was how hard life was when she first moved back to the area. Again, she was a nurse aide making minimum age. Due to making so little money, she could not afford a car and public transportation did not yet against. Before every shift, she would leave super early, and carry my mother in her arms and walked the 4 miles to the hospital and left her at an on site daycare. After her shift, she would usually pay for a taxi if she could afford it. By the time my mom was 6 years old, Nana bought a used car, it was a beater late 50s Chevy that was rusted and got around 1 mile a gallon. Mom was never close with Nana due to Nana's working 2 jobs, she raised herself. I will discuss my mother's childhood some other time, but I will say my mother started working full time at the age of 14 waiting table at Pizza Hut.

Nana inherited a trailer in the middle of nowhere on a lake two years before I was born. She worked as a home health aide until she was forced to stop working. Unfortunately, Nana lived check to check until a few months before going into the nursing home. I do not know about most of the events of her life as Nana just would not talk about it. Mom and Nana did not get along and would always fight, but I never saw that until close to the end. She was the awesome stereotypical grandma to me. She was a fundamentalist Baptist and always in church every Sunday.The only thing Nana loved more than church and Jesus was the Dallas Cowboys, watching almost every game from their inception in 1960 until her dementia worsened. Nana was about 6 feet tall and weighed about 300 to 350 lbs with bright red hair that was always in a perm (think white, ginger Madea. Nana died of congestive heart failure after spending 3 years in a nursing home in April 2014.

One of the reasons why I am still a member of my previous church is because of the free Ancestory.com membership. I have learned so much about both sides of my family. Nana's dad Cliff died when she was 1 month old so she never knew him. Cliff spent his entire short life as a sharecropper. He most likely never left the 20 mile radius around the farm. My great grandfather had a short and very difficult life. He died of Typhoid Fever at the age of 36 and his buried half a mile from the old farmhouse a few feet over from Nana. Cliff's mom died when he was 15 years old from the Spanish Flu. This cemetery is filled with people dying in 1918 with the Spanish Flu ravaging the community. From the looks of it, corona doesnt have shit on the Spanish Flu.

With the genealogy app, I have learned so much about these unsung heroes. I could not imagine living the lives that Nana and her family had a century ago. I am guessing I will find out real soon what it is like to live in the freezing cold without power for days when this snowstorm hit.




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