Joseph Noonan: "Could you please explain how you got the Hill Country into East Texas? That must have taken a mighty big truck, even by Texas standards."
Doyle We're talking about two different parts of Texas. You are talking about LBJ's area in an area south of Dallas and less forested than the piney woods of East Texas. I've been in that area which some people call "West Texas", but always found it sort of out away from the world I grew up in which was the center of Texas politics until recent times. My Grandparents farm (which grew cotton) is in the hilly pine woods issuing out of the great southern pine woods stretching back to Georgia, if I understand that sort of thing. That area outside of Tyler Texas is hilly. There is a thousand foot Mount on the edge of the old family farm for instance. Not mountainous like Tennessee, but more rugged feeling to me than the the Hill country you refer to. I have family around Corsicana Texas too. The edge of the oil fields. Limestone bluffs, not good growing conditions comparatively. My wife has family in West Texas where her brother was farmed out in the fifties and sixties. That would be Midland near Odessa.
Doyle In Houston, my uncle Talmadge worked in the gulf on the oil rigs, as did Junior, and Earl (another uncle and his son). Talmidge got skin cancer on the oil derricks. I believe my cousins, James, and George did rough necking at times, but I have lost contact with them over the years. I have quite a few relatives. My mothers family consisted of twelve brothers and sisters. They lived in clusters of family farms in the hills of East Texas. Then the cousins had to leave and that was that. My Grandmother eventually lived alone way out away from her neighbors. I remember her showing my Mother how if she heard a disturbance at night she would take her pistol out and shoot it off, saying "Come on in" bang bang. No one ever bothered her though. My family would be called rednecks these days. But in the thirties they was "hillbillies" meaning barefoot, rural and poor. The terminology changes to suit the tastes of the upper class that wants to have a cute label for poor working folks.
Doyle Where did you grow up Joseph? What did your family do?
regards, Doyle