Bettie Pittman Waller – Kathy Waller

1902: The Barber Pig

Posted on January 6, 2021January 6, 2021 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

In January, it’s traditional to summarize the events of the previous year, but there weren’t any, or to announce resolutions for the next year, but I know better than to make those.

Well, I do have a couple of goals: to keep the COVID-19 virus out of the Davis household (and everywhere else I can) and to be vaccinated (which, every time I check online, looks like it’ll happen before 2022, maybe).

Anyway, I’ll begin 2021 with another story told by Aunt Bettie Pittman Waller. She was known for telling the truth, never embroidering, and she was an eye-witness. She was sixteen years old. She lived down the street from the Barber family, and Miss Annie Barber was a special friend. I think they later taught school together for several years. The Normal she mentioned was a teachers’ college in San Marcos, Texas, which is now Texas State University.

I’ve used most of the real names because I don’t think their families will object. But a young man remains anonymous. Aunt Bettie also mentioned one particular detail about him but then said, “You don’t need to put that in,” so I didn’t. It’s nothing derogatory, just funny, but it doesn’t change the story.

The story is taken from the tape of an interview I did with Aunt Bettie.

###

This really happened at Mr. Barber’s house when Callie and Maud were little. I know, because I was there, too, and some other children—Jessie Daugherty was one—and we were all interested in Mattie’s beau. Annie was in San Marcos then, at the Normal, in 1902.

Mattie was going with a boy—Louis S____. Annie boarded with Mr. S____’s family. He was a grocery salesman who came to Fentress once a week. He was very religious and would time his trips so he could come to day services when we were having a meeting; we had them about ten o’clock.

Well, Mattie had a date with Louis S____—he was just a youngster like Mattie—and he was to come at about five o’clock. He had a horse and buggy.

Mr. Barber’s house set fronting south, like the house does now, but it was closer to the road, because when the highway went through they set it way over. Mr. Barber had a well or a cistern, either word would do, by the door of the dining room, and people could see the well from the road.

They had a pet pig that had grown to a hog, but they still just called it “the pig.” They fed it out by the well in front of the house, away from the other pigs. And they let it in the house. They couldn’t keep it out, because it had learned to push around the buttons on the porch and open the door.

But they sure weren’t going to let it in when Louis came to see Mattie, and all the children were working to see that it stayed out. They tried hard.

But the pig got in the back door and ran through the house with all the children following and ran out the front, squealing, just as Louis drove up.

As the pig ran out of the dining room door, Mag looked up at Mattie and said, “Mat, he won’t be back!” And Louis didn’t ever come back. I don’t think they ever invited him.

I just think, if the pig had been kept out, life might have been different for Mattie.

###

Two stories about the first months of Aunt Bettie and Uncle Maurice’s marriage appear at Ink-Stained Wretches.’

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Image of pig by Ryan Gudmunson from Pixabay

Lost and Found

Posted on December 15, 2020 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

I’m posting at Ink-Stained Wretches today, but for some reason, I’m unable to reblog the post. So here’s the beginning, with a link to the rest. Or you can just go to Lost and Found and read the whole thing in one place. By the way, it’s not about computers. It’s about something I found while looking for something I’d lost. What I found was better—memories.

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
– Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings

In 2000, I wrote a story I titled, “Stop Signs.”

That was in the Dark Ages. Ancient desktop, probably Windows 3.1 and WordPerfect. Hard drives. Floppy disks that didn’t flop.

I composed in cursive—sat on the bed with a pencil and a tablet, wrote a couple of pages, crossed the room to type the fragment into a document and make some edits, moved back to the bed to pencil two or three more pages, went back to the computer to transcribe and edit, moved back to the bed . . . And reaching “The End,” printed and penciled in more edits, then went back to the keyboard to type the changes, then printed and penciled more edits, then back to the keyboard . . .

It was my second foray into fiction. I rather liked the result, and as a naive newbie, I submitted it to a contest. A month later the North Texas Professional Writers Association notified me the story had placed first in its fiction division. They enclosed a check for $50 (real money!) and a copy of the chapbook in which winners’ work was published.

Later I became comfortable composing at the keyboard. I printed, marked the manuscript, revised and edited the document, went through that process several times, stored the file, ripped up the paper.

Down the road apiece, “hard copies” became unnecessary—just attach a file and email it off to contests or zines. Easy peasy.

And then came another desktop, and laptops, and new versions of Windows, one after the other, and CD-ROMS (writable!), and external backups, and online backup services, and cloud backups, and a whole raft of things I’ve never heard of.

The paperless society. Everything on record, available at the touch of a fingertip, no document or image ever lost.

Yeah, right.

Read the rest of the post on Ink-Stained Wretches, here.

#AtoZChallenge 2020: J Is for Just One Story & an Inconvenient Prayer

Posted on April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Just one story, then I’m gone.

***

Around the year 1900, several miles outside the little farming community of Fentress, Texas, a boy working in the field looked up and saw a funnel cloud. He ran home, shouting that that a tornado was coming.

The family gathered in the kitchen. They were frantic. The whirling black cloud was headed directly for the house. At any second, it would hit. All they could do was pray.

So they dropped to their knees and closed their eyes, and the father prayed the only prayer he could think of:

“Father, for what we’re about to receive, make us truly thankful.”

And then he jumped to his feet and shouted, “Oh, no! That won’t do!”

***

The story is true. My great-aunt Bettie Waller, who had known the principals, told it while her husband, Uncle Maurice, sat by and shook with silent laughter. Last fall, while going through old pictures, I found a piece of paper with story notes written on it—in my great-aunt Ethel’s handwriting—a scrap of the history of a small place.

***

Epilogue: The tornado turned, missed the house, and hit the barn. Neither humans nor animals were harmed.Everyone was truly thankful.

More Memories of June 19: What the Angels Eat

Posted on June 23, 2018 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Yesterday I shared a Juneteenth memory–roasting ears. Today I’m sharing memories of two more foods that made June special.

The first is even better than roasting ears: watermelon, which is grown around Luling, ten miles from my hometown. Corn could be frozen for use any time, but when I was a child, watermelon made you w-a-i-t. And once the season was past, that was that. It took forever for Juneteenth to roll around again.*

For more than sixty years, Luling-ites have celebrated each harvest with the Watermelon Thump, a long weekend of music, dance, a parade, carnival rides, arts and crafts exhibitions, the coronation of the Thump Queen, watermelon eating contests, and the event that stands out from all the rest–the World Championship Seed Spitting Competition, which takes place at the Watermelon Spitway. According to Thump history,

In 1989** a Guinness World Record was set for the first time in Luling for the longest watermelon seed-spit. The record of 65 feet, 4 inches was set by John Wilkinson, a festival attendee from Houston, Texas. Then in 1989,** a local man, Lee Wheelis, re-established the record spitting a distance of 68 feet, 9 1/8 inches. This year a $500 cash prize will be awarded to the top spitter in the Championship Contest and should Luling’s record distance be broken, an additional $500 will be added to the top prize.

In addition, “[s]pitting champions have also been featured guests on the Tonight Show starring Jay Leno, the Regis and Kathy Lee Show, and Howie Mandell’s show.”

Luling also claims to have the world’s largest watermelon. Click here to see a picture.

But, although the Watermelon Thump is a grand festival, it’s really beside the point. The pleasure is in the eating.

I don’t have the words to describe the taste of watermelon, but Mark Twain did:

Watermelon by andreeautza via morguefile

“The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world’s luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.”

The italics are mine. And Twain was right. Who could repent of eating watermelon?

(Not wishing to spread misinformation I looked it up. The Bible doesn’t say Eve repented after eating the forbidden fruit, but, all things considered, I’ll bet she did.)

My last Juneteenth memory is Aunt Bettie Waller’s birthday. She was married to my great-uncle Maurice from 1905 till his death in 1970, and I don’t think they ever had a cross word between them. That’s not an exaggeration. They were crazy about each other and spent a lot of time laughing. He was the quietest person I’ve ever known, though; when other people guffawed, he just shook. Occasionally Aunt Bettie would decide they should do something, such as air condition the house or turn a screened porch into a sitting room, and he would disagree. When that happened, she talked–quietly, mildly, just mentioning it from time to time–until, after a while, she’d convinced him it was his idea. And after it was done, he was always so pleased with the result.

Burger and Fries by Chance Agrella via Free Range Photos

She did report one major subject of discord. When their son, Pete, was very young, Uncle Maurice refused to discipline him because “he won’t love me.” Aunt Bettie pleaded: “If you don’t make him behave, he won’t know you’re his father.” Once when Uncle Maurice corrected him, Pete retorted, “Uh-uh. That’s Ma’s job.” Then one night at dinner, Pete lobbed a plate of food at Uncle Maurice, and family dynamics underwent a radical change. Everybody kept on loving everybody else.

We often celebrated Aunt Bettie’s birthday with a dinner, featuring corn and watermelon, of course–but the entree was always hamburgers. To her, that was what the angels eat.

Treated to lunch once at a fashionable restaurant, Aunt Bettie ordered a hamburger. Her host expressed disapproval, something along the lines of, “Miss Bettie, I didn’t invite you to this restaurant for a meal you can get at the Dairy Queen. Order anything you want.” Aunt Bettie wanted a hamburger.

The menu at our gatherings rarely varied. Each woman brought a signature dish. Even for her own party, Aunt Bettie made potato salad. Unfortunately, no one asked for the recipe; there probably wasn’t one. The secret ingredient was probably sugar. That generation of Wallers put sugar into everything–and still, most of them were built like scarecrows.

Aunt Bettie lived to be 101. She would have been 132 last Tuesday. She was a delight to be around, and I miss her.

I miss that potato salad, too. I wish I had the recipe. More to the point, I wish I had a big bowl of it.

And I wish I were one of the Wallers built like a scarecrow.

***

*Watermelons are available all year in grocery stores now, shipped in from Elsewhere. No waiting. Small. Bland. They’re not the same.

** The paragraph from the Thump webpage was copied and pasted into this post. I assume one of the dates reading 1989 is a typographical error.

Concerning titles: In 1997, the Texas Legislature declared Knox City the “Seedless Watermelon Capital of Texas.” Both Dilley and Hempstead claim to be the Watermelon Capital of Texas.

Washington Post subscribers can read more about seed spitting in Luling at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/at-texas-festival-watermelon-seed-spitting-is-big-sport/2014/06/26/4c58d270-f588-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html

Day B: Ben Hur #AtoZChallenge

Posted on April 2, 2018April 3, 2018 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Sunday night, and I’m watching Ben Hur on the local PBS channel. I saw it the first time on a Saturday afternoon at the Rita Theatre in Del Rio, Texas, in 1961. The movie was released in 1959, but Del Rio was an out-of-the-way place, and films didn’t travel as quickly then as they do today.

It’s a beautiful movie. The highlight is the chariot race that pits the main character, Judah Ben Hur, against his childhood friend, later enemy, the Roman Messala.

My friends and I didn’t go home raving about the chariot race, of course. The story was about friendship and betrayal and hatred and revenge and forgiveness–mature themes–and if we appeared too much interested in the race, adults might think us childish. Nine-year-old girls don’t like to be thought childish.

Watching tonight (for the fifth or sixth time at least), I think how silly we were. The chariot race is magnificent. Andalusian horses and Lippizans, pounding hooves, blades on the hubs of Mesalla’s chariot cutting through his rivals spokes, cars tipping, drivers flying out, being dragged and trampled, Messala lashing Judah with his whip, the crowd cheering…

One critic wrote that chariot race “will probably be preserved in film archives as the finest example of the use of the motion picture camera to record an action sequence. The race . . . represents some 40 minutes* of the most hair-raising excitement that film audiences have ever witnessed.”

*Wreckage from the chariot race in Ben Hur (1959) trailer. Public domain. Via Wikipedia.*

Moreover, it was done without the aid of sophisticated computer software. Those were real men, real horses, real dangers. I’m glad I grew up before special effects became easy, when we were still capable of being impressed and saying Wow!

A Baby Boomer, I’ve had a lifetime of Wows! When I was five, Charlton Heston parted the Red Sea. Wow! When I was nine, Alan Shepard traveled into outer space. Wow! When I was ten, the Absentminded Professor ironed Flubber onto the soles of high school basketball players, and they bumped their heads on the gymnasium ceiling. Wow! When I was eleven, John Glenn orbited the Earth. Wow! When I was eighteen, two Americans walked on the moon. Wow!

Older people told stories that elicited Wows, too. In 1910, my great-uncle and -aunt, Maurice and Bettie Waller, and Aunt Bettie’s best friend, Miss Annie Barber saw a stage performance of Ben Hur. After sending students home early–Aunt Bettie and Miss Annie taught together at a rural school–they and Uncle Maurice traveled by horse and buggy fifty miles north to Austin, saw the play, and immediately headed back home. They arrived just in time to open school the next morning.

When Aunt Bettie told me that, I was so impressed. Bouncing over a hundred miles of gravel roads in a horse-drawn buggy in less than twenty-four hours, just to go to the theater–that was a big deal.

But even more impressive–there was a chariot race. Two real chariots and two real horses. On the stage.

Wow!