Living Stories

Original Airdates: August 3, 4, 6 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Maze.

When KWTX-TV first went on the air in 1955, it was without a network affiliation, a situation no one in the industry envied. But being an independent station was in some ways a blessing in disguise, as it forced KWTX to focus on local creative talent for programming. One of the resulting series was The Harley Berg Show, a wildlife program that became a staple for many Central Texans during its twenty-four-year run.

Former KWTX-TV news director Win Frankel describes the show:

"Everyone in Central Texas knew Harley Berg. He was on for many, many years. It may have been about snakes or raccoons or whatever it was, and there was always one there. Whatever he was talking about, was a live one there. He explained all about the snakes and all the wildlife that ever came around here. It was very well done."

One particular episode of The Harley Berg Show stands out in Frankel's memory:

"And one time, rattlesnake got loose and got on the floor and wiggled around like a rattlesnake does, and we spent some time trying to get that snake under control. But that was funny."

Frankel explains that the camera followed the reptile - not Harley:

"The snake was there. There was a story. You know, you don't knock yourself out from the story. Mmm. And it was a poisonous snake. Well, that was good, but that doesn't happen every day. Thank goodness. (laughs)"

KWTX founder M. N. 'Buddy' Bostick, a long-standing force in broadcasting and the Waco community, discusses the program's popularity:

"The television industry at that time had developed two ratings services: Nielsen and ARB [American Research Bureau]. And they rated the popularity of the programs. CBS had the most popular programs on the air. And the most popular program was I Love Lucy. And we had a program on the air at the same time I Love Lucy was on the air. And it was called The Harley Berg Show, and Harley was a lovable guy. Everybody liked him. He had a jillion stories, and he told those stories on his Harley Berg Show. And Harley Berg out-rated I Love Lucy. We'd go to New York or our New York reps would go talk to agencies about advertising on our station, and they'd say, What's this Harley Berg Show? Said, It out-rates I Love Lucy. That's right."

Shortly after going on the air, KWTX-TV garnered both ABC and CBS networks, dual affiliations it kept until KXXV went on the air in the mid-eighties. But it was the immediate success of its early independent programs like The Harley Berg Show that helped the station forge lasting relationships with advertisers and its viewing audience.

Harley Berg, 1975

Hear about Harley Berg's popular wildlife TV program in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

The Harley Berg Show
(03:25 )

Original Airdates: August 10, 11, 13 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

During the summer months in Waco before air-conditioning, getting comfortable enough at night to go to sleep could be a challenge.

Charles Armstrong recalls an alteration made to the house his family moved into in the early 1920s:

“We didn't live there long till Daddy and my brothers built a room on the back, went all the way across. They called it a sleeping porch. It had windows all the way around it, you know, just one window after the other all the way around it.”

Mary Sendón remembers the porch on her childhood home:

“Right in back of the hallway, at the end of the house, was a screened-in porch. It was screened in on one side; that was one side that opened out, but it was the coolest, most comfortable place. We spent our summers out there almost all the time. And, of course, the porch was a wonderful place to sleep in the summertime. My mother and dad slept on the back porch in the summertime because it was right next to the kitchen, and they got up early.”

Sendón explains that fans helped a little:

“My grandfather had fans in his shop, you know. And he finally got the idea of putting a fan on the back porch, and that fan circulated the air. All the doors were open to—the kitchen, the dining room, and the bedrooms—all opened out onto that back porch. And that fan circulated air and kept that part of the house pretty cool. And then, of course, we had these little circulating fans, you know, we'd put down on the floor. But it would cool one spot; it really didn't do all that much good. Somebody got the fan; somebody didn't.”

She describes what she did one particular night:

“And my sister and I, we had a front bedroom, and all the windows were up, but still it was just blazing hot. So we decided—our front hall, this hall that went all through the house had linoleum covering on it. It was cool. We took our pillows, and we decided we were going to sleep on the floor in front of the front door so to be cool.”

Thomas Wayne Harvey recalls his family left the house altogether to get a good night's rest:

“It was too hot to sleep inside in those days. The folks, they'd move their bed outside about twenty or thirty yards away from the house so they could catch a breeze from all directions because there wasn't no trees or anything to stop the breeze. And I'd have my bed right there next to the house. I had a rollaway bed with a feather mattress on it. That was in case of rain that they could just fold mine up and roll it inside right quick. And then they could fold their—they carried one mattress out there, and they could fold that mattress with their bed—put the pillows in the center and fold the mattress and run inside right quick if it started raining.”

Harvey relates the perils of sleeping outside:

“It kind of got comical at times. We had an old cow named Pet, and you know how a cow stands around and chews the cud and they take their tongue and lick one side of their nostril and lick the other side of their nostril. Old Pet, she'd chew her rope in two and come up there and—that old cow liked my daddy—and that old cow would come up there and start licking him on the face (laughs) early every morning because she was wanting to be milked. And then we also had a rooster that would get up there on the head—the old iron bedstead, and he would get up there and crow every morning and wake everybody up. And it'd also (laughs) leave his telltale marks every once in a while right on Daddy's forehead.”

With the availability and affordability of window units after WWII, air-conditioning became a possibility for many southern homes, making it finally possible to snooze comfortably in one's own bed in the summer. The architecture of new houses soon changed as a result, and existing sleeping porches were torn down or converted into sunrooms.

A sleeping porch in Texas.

Listen to the segment aired on KWBU-FM: 

Fighting the Heat at Night in the Summertime
(03:45 )

Original Airdates: August 17, 18, 20 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

With its many army airfields and factories during World War II, Texas was full of opportunities for women. The war offered some the chance to work outside the home in positions previously dominated by men and gave others a chance to see the world.

Cherokee County native Ona B. Reed remembers her time as a "Rosie the Riveter," working on B-24 bombers and C-87 cargo planes at Consolidated Aircraft in Forth Worth:  

Two people work together, the riveter and the bucker. It's a matter of putting two pieces of metal together. So you drill a hole, depending on the size of the rivet it took, and then you put the rivet in there and put the gun against the rivet. And the bucker was behind—and maybe you couldn't even see her—but she held a bar up against the other side of the rivet, and you thrrrrrrrrrr (mimics sound of rivet gun). And then the bucker would either hit (hitting noise) one time for good or two times to take it out, depending on what kind of head she got on the other side.

Always on Reed's mind were the men who would be flying the planes she helped to build:

They really emphasized this: that every rivet should be perfect because just one little vibration and it can mess up the whole plane if it were right, was in a critical spot or something. So I thought about it a lot because I had a number of cousins who were pilots, and the man I married after the war was a pilot. So I had personal reasons to be very careful with what I was doing.

Flora Wunneburger of Austin, who was in basic training when Japan surrendered, recalls her experiences as a volunteer for the army air corps following World War II:

From Scott Field I went overseas as a flight nurse at Hickam Air Force Base, which was a beautiful place to be. And stayed there, was flying in and out of Japan and the Philippines. What we would do—the planes didn't have enough gas, and you had to stop at every island just about on the way back. And in Japan, they were still under the American control. It was a nice, clean place, and the people were nice. Of course, my country was saying, You do this, you do this [to Japan]. But, anyway, we would go in there. And there was an old airfield that we went into at first, but later on they got it fixed up, had Haneda [Airport, also known as Tokyo International Airport] to land in. And we would go out to different places because we'd get in there and then have some free time. And I loved going down to Osaka. Oh, it was so pretty down there. Or we'd go up in the mountains. And it was real funny: you'd get on these trains, and they would have their goats and then have their chickens with them. So you had to get into another compartment, or you'd have goats and chickens with you.

The role that American women played in World War II is immeasurable. Their country needed them, and they responded. Their experiences during these years inspired many women to begin demanding equal rights for their gender at home and laid the groundwork for a second wave of the women's movement.

Listen to the segment about Texas women doing their part in WWII that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Texas Women and WWII
(03:17 )

Original Airdates: August 24, 25, 27 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Prior to the days of refrigeration, people the world over relied on ice to keep perishables fresh as long as possible. The ice business was certainly alive and well in the American South, especially in summer months.

Waco native Helen Geltemeyer recalls the trips she and her sister would take in the twenties and thirties to keep their house outfitted with the frozen substance:

"What Allene and I did, went up Seventeenth to Ross, and they had a man who sold ice. And he had these little two-wheeler things that he would let you take home if you brought back. So Allene and I would go get that little old piece of ice and take it home, and we'd fight all the way there and fight all the way back. But that's the way we got our ice."

Geltemeyer remembers the event leading up to a new contraption in their kitchen:

"Then when I was fourteen or maybe—yeah, I'd say I was fourteen and going to South Junior, my daddy said, "We're buying an icebox because I'm tired of wanting a cold drink.' And he'd been working in the yard because we had hedge all around our place, I mean, and he would trim that just perfect. We just had all that yard fixed. And he wanted a drink of water, and he said he wanted ice-cold water. So he bought an icebox. He didn't buy it for us; he bought it for himself. But we enjoyed."

Thomas Wayne Harvey discusses the ice industry in Waco in the 1940s:

"We had Geyser Ice and Southland Ice, two different companies here in town that would go by up and down the street in their ice trucks. And if you had a Geyser card in the window, well, you could get Geyser ice that day. If you had a Southland card in the window—and the cards was twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, and a hundred. And whatever you wanted, you'd set it where you could read a hundred from the street, and they'd bring in a hundred pounds or twenty-five pounds or whatever you wanted from the street. And the men packed the ice in on their backs with ice hooks and things like that, in those days."

He explains that finding an iceman in your kitchen was no cause for concern:

"They came on in. In those days, you never locked your door. You knew them; they knew you. They was just basically, "part of the family' because you could be in there eating supper and they'd come in: "Hello, how are you doing?' Or they'd knock at the door: 'Hope you're decent; iceman coming in,' you know, things like that. You'd get your ice, and they would come once every two weeks and collect for it."

Since the advent of electric refrigerators, the demand for ice has drastically decreased for the typical kitchen in the South, and gone is the need for a nearby company like Geyser or Southland. The bags of ice for sale in convenience and grocery stores today serve as a reminder of the business that ice once was.

Geyser Ice Co. in Waco circa 1920. (Photo by Fred Gildersleeve)

Listen to the segment about ice in Waco that aired on 103.3 KWBU-FM: 

Ice
(02:57 )

Original Airdates: August 31 and September 1, 3 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

1922 and 1932 were not the best years to be looking for a job in the United States. The former was the year after the depression of the twenties, and the latter was the year the economy hit rock bottom. Understandably, students graduating from college with plans to teach did not have the luxury of passing on any job offers.

Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir, a 1922 Baylor graduate who would later teach in Calvert, began her teaching career in Charleston, Missouri, after her father spoke with the superintendent of schools:

"He said they needed a Latin and Spanish teacher. My father told him I could do it, although I hadn't (laughs) planned to teach either one. And this is the comical thing about it: when I arrived at the school the week before the school start[ed] for our series of teachers' meeting[s], I was told that I would also have to teach a course in sewing and coach the girls' basketball team. Well, coaching the girls' basketball was all right, but I had never sewed, do not sew today, but I taught sewing. I got a book. They had a textbook. And all that I taught was the elements of sewing—what kind of seams?—flat seams. What other kind are there? I don't know. (laughs) Not even to this day can I sew. But you can do most anything when you put your mind to it, can't you?"

A graduate of Texas State College for Women in 1932, with a degree in physical education, Wilma Buntin had a surprise awaiting her when she arrived at her first teaching post at Shawnee Elementary in Graham, Texas:

"They said, Oh, you're the new first-grade teacher. I said,  No, I'm not the first-grade teacher. Mr. Gilmer hired me to teach P.E.' Well, that kind of befuddled them. They talked it over and came back with the same conclusion: You're the first-grade teacher over at Shawnee. Well, I thought I better just not be too hard in my position. I'd just wait and see."

Once at the school, Buntin met the principal, who confirmed what her co-workers had said:

"And he took me upstairs, and sure enough I was the new first-grade teacher. But he assured me I would be that only for one semester. Mary Kenny was the only first-grade teacher there. She had a double session, and it was too much for her. So Mr. Matthews, some of them told me later, told Mary to just take out everybody who couldn't learn and put them in my room. He said, Because Miss Buntin has never taught, and she can't go wrong.' (laughs) I was about ready to turn around and go home."

Although these positions were not what Buntin or Casimir had studied for in college, they successfully tackled each challenge, seeing them as opportunities. Both women enjoyed long teaching careers, influencing hundreds of lives.

Teacher instructing class during the Great Depression.

Listen to the segment about the first teaching jobs of two Texas college graduates aired on 103.3 KWBU-FM: 

First Teaching Jobs in 1922 and 1932
(03:15 )

Original Airdates: September 7, 8, 10 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 came ashore September 8, taking the prosperous city by surprise. With an estimated death toll of 8,000, the storm remains the deadliest natural disaster in the United States. Waco native Mary Kemendo Sendón recalls one happy ending to emerge from the hurricane. The story begins after waves washed family friends who were living in Galveston out of their home:

"Well, Paul Darro and his wife were floating on this mattress, and he noticed something paddling like in the water by the mattress. And he reached down; there was a tiny little puppy, a little black puppy that was trying to save itself by swimming along by the mattress. He picked it up, put it in his pocket."

The Darros decided to give the puppy to Sendón's grandfather, who had helped them escape Galveston and travel to Waco:

"Well, the family went crazy over that dog. It was a cute little old dog. And Grandfather gave it a name to celebrate the Spanish-American War. He called the dog Dewey after Admiral [George] Dewey. (laughter) And that dog was famous. Everybody wanted to see that dog because that was a Spanish-American—got that name of Admiral Dewey. That little old dog could go all over the neighborhood, and we'd know where she was because we'd hear her tags jingling. When my grandmother would come to see us in the afternoons—she'd come down to our house—we always knew that our grandmother was coming because we'd hear those tags. (laughs) And she walked right behind my grandmother like a guard. That dog could—she could just get around. And she'd go off, and they wouldn't know where she was for a long time. And all of a sudden, she'd come back home."

Dewey was a faithful dog whose protectiveness knew no bounds:

One day, my grandmother wanted to change the furniture in her house. And she bought some new furniture, and they took the old furniture in trade. And there was a baby buggy included in all of that furniture. Well, later that afternoon, (laughs) the furniture man called my grandfather and said, 'Will you please come down? We've got to do something about some of your furniture.' My grandfather went down, and there sat Dewey in the baby buggy. And somebody wanted to buy the baby buggy, and he wouldn't let them touch it. They said, 'This dog will not let us touch this baby buggy. You've got to come and get this dog.' That dog, you see, had watched over the children in the family and was so attached to that baby buggy, he wouldn't let them have it. So my grandfather had to pick Dewey up and bring her home."

The hurricane brought many changes to Galveston, most notably the raising of the city and building of the Galveston Seawall, as residents hoped to prevent the storm's outcome from happening again. When a storm of comparable strength hit the island in 1915, 53 people died, a fraction of the lives taken in 1900.

A flooded street in the aftermath of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

Listen to the story of a life saved from the Galveston Hurricane, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Galveston Hurricane and Dewey the Dog
(03:04 )

Airdates: September 14, 15, 17

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Many memories from our youth are intertwined with those of school, the place where we were making friends and developing interests.

Waco native Helen Geltemeyer shares a treasured memory from her schooldays:

"My earliest memories of Bell's Hill is going to school, walking every morning and with our dog, Tex, following my sister and I and maybe my brother. And the dog would stand at the door of this far end, the east end of the school, and we'd say, Tex, go home! And he'd finally go home. Every day that dog went to school with us. And I loved that school because you could see one end to the other. And the floors were just so clean and nice, and we had such a good time. All my teachers were—seemed to be so lovely."

She recalls her older brother Ross and his friends:

"And a lot of them had donkeys around there across the street. My brother was one of them. They loved to take their donkey to school, Hardy Jones and he, to feed—they were under these mesquite trees. They'd go over there and water them. We thought that was so funny for them to get to do it. It was just for the fun and heck of it. (laughter) They finally quit that, but I always would beg my brother to let me sit on his donkey. And he'd let me sit, and all his boyfriends would be standing around."

Manuel Hernandez, whose family moved from Mexico when he was three years old, describes his school years at Mt. Carmel and Elm Mott and his struggle to learn English:

"The teacher's didn't want to travel to that school. One of them decide to stay the whole week, and they rent the room. It was a nice community. But I couldn't learn English because half of the kids were Mexican people, and the others were white. We get along okay, but we separate on, kind of, the language. That was my problem, that I couldn't learn the English language until I moved to Elm Mott, where it was only three Spanish people in the school. So we had to learn it. And I was already about eleven years old, and being in the first grade, it make you feel bad. Of course, we had some Czech people that had same problems I had because they were speaking at home Czech and English at school. So it was kind of combination of language."

Hernandez left the Elm Mott school during the early days of the Great Depression to find work and help his family financially. Geltemeyer eventually graduated from Waco High in the mid-thirties. Through the years, they carried with them the memories of those formative days in school.

A Southern 1920s classroom.

Listen to memories of long-ago school days that aired on KWBU-FM. 

Early School Memories
(03:09 )

Original Airdates: September 21, 22, 24 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

White lightning, hooch, mountain dew, firewater—all names for moonshine, or distilled spirits made in an unlicensed still. Although moonshine is most often associated with Prohibition in the U.S., the practice as we know it began shortly after the formation of the country, when people were attempting to avoid the new federal tax on alcohol.

CBF missionary Earl Martin recalls his encounter with a moonshine still in the late forties, when he was teaching in eastern Tennessee:

"I was traipsing in the mountain trails in an area that wasn't too well-known to me, and I suddenly came on a moonshine still. And it was—it was—the fire was going, and it was smoking. But I didn't see anybody because they heard a stranger coming, and I suddenly realized the danger of the situation because to discover a moonshine still back in those years—and since I was from Washington, DC, I could have been perceived as a federal agent—"

Interviewer: "As a G-man."

"—even though I was a young man. So I moved quickly out of there, suffice—(laughter) I never did see anybody, but I wondered if somebody had their shotgun trained at me."

Avery Downing, former superintendent of Waco ISD, describes the prevalence of moonshine in East Texas during Prohibition:

"It was available. Everybody knew it and knew some of the places to go to get moonshine whiskey. Now, I never knew where any of those so-called stills were, but that doesn't mean that some of those wooded areas, which were extensive—I remember a place called Scott's Farm. Scott's Farm included many, many square miles of uncultivated, wooded area, and I'm sure that there must have been stills operated in such a place as that."

Once experienced, moonshine was difficult to forget:

"I remember how it—what the stuff looked like. I remember how it tasted. It was just almost like kerosene. It was white and extremely powerful to the taste buds and, I'm sure, other ways, too."

Downing explains the dark side of moonshine:

"The horror of the bootleg world is that somebody would get ahold of some bad liquor and come up with the jake leg. There were people accused of having the jake leg that I wonder now if they weren't victims of some sort of a paralysis or polio-type thing, I don't know."

Today, moonshining has waned, as large companies can produce alcohol in large enough quantities to make its cost competitive to that made secretly without taxes. However, there are still those who wish to defy the government's authority by producing the liquid themselves.

Man (center) operating a moonshine still in Knox County,Tennessee, in 1936.

Hear the segment on moonshine that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Moonshine
(03:16 )

Airdates: September 28, 29 and October 1

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

The origins of Americans riding the rails in search of work trace back to shortly after the Civil War, when ex-soldiers and others sought work on the frontier. Their numbers rose sharply during the Great Depression, when jobs and money were scarce. These hobos became common sights in transportation hubs like Waco.

Charles and Ruth Armstrong, both longtime Waco residents, explain their impressions of hobos during the thirties:

C. Armstrong: "Most of them was good people. They was kind of like the homeless. They wasn't out to hurt anybody."

R. Armstrong: "At that time, see, it wasn't anything unusual. I mean, everybody was in about the same boat because everybody was having a hard time."

C. Armstrong: "And, see, they called them ‘hobos' regardless. Some of them was hobos all they wanted to be, kind of like the homeless. There's some of them that want to be. And some of them was traveling south to get out of the cold or get them a job."

Mr. Armstrong describes how hobos communicated with each other:

"And what they'd do, they'd venture off from the tracks down there and come through the neighborhood and come to your house and knock on the door and said, I'm going to so-and-so. I'm catching a train down there, and said, I need something to eat. And Mama never turned nobody down. They'd go down as far as they could. And what they'd do, they'd mark—they'd have them some chalk, an old chalk rock—they'd mark a spot on a house, you know, on the—not on the house, but on the curb, if they had a curb, or a sidewalk. And as they'd go back they'd keep it marked. And the guys would come in and they'd know where to go get something to eat. They'd know that woman there or man would feed them, and they'd keep it marked. And one guy might feed ten or twelve guys a month. And nobody else would never get—they'd go to a house and they didn't get nothing, they wouldn't mark them—or put ‘0' or something like it."

The way families treated hobos made strong impressions on their children, as Waco philanthropist Bernard Rapoport recalls:

"We lived by the railroad tracks, you know. We were very poor. And these hobos in the—in '29, thirties, you know, early thirties, hobos would come by the house, and Mama would give them a peanut butter sandwich. And one day I said to Mama, ‘I mean,' I said, ‘Mama, some of these people don't deserve that sandwich.' She says, ‘It's better to feed all than to miss one that needs.' Now, I mean, now she imbued that kind of philosophy within me. And so if somebody needs help and I help them and they fool me and I lose, that doesn't discourage me. I know—I say, ‘Well, the next guy won't do that.'"

Although the railroad industry has dramatically changed since the thirties, with faster trains and fewer lines, hobos still exist, although the stringent security measures put in place after 9/11 nearly wiped out the practice. The current economy has seen hobos on the rise again but to a tiny fraction of the estimated 1.5 million men, women, and children who rode the rails during the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Twenty-five-year-old male riding the rails in 1939. (Photo by Dorothea Lange)

Listen to the segment on hobos that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Hobos
(03:16 )

Original Airdates: October 5, 6, 8 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Pirate radio stations in the U.S. were born when President Taft
initiated federal regulation of the airwaves in 1912. Navy ships had been complaining that unlicensed broadcasters were interfering with their transmissions. Even with the new laws in place, pirate stations continued to pop up all over the country, for radio was still relatively new and full of magic and possibilities, and equipment was easy to build.

Charles Armstrong recalls the influence of his after-school stops by a local radio store in Waco in the thirties:

"There was a little shop down on the corner of Thirteenth and Clay, and I'd just go by there on the way home from school and go and talk to him. I was real interested in it. And when they'd have the boxing matches they had, you know, way back there, well, a lot of people was interested in them, and I despised them. And so I made me an old device I could knock them off. The local people right around here close within a block or two of me, I could put them off the air. It's kind of like (laughs)—kind of like scrambling it, and it worked. And I'd get a kick out of—they'd all be sitting around there getting ready for it, and it'd come on. I'd turn my machine on, and it'd sound like static—like an electrical storm. So that went on for several years. But I finally built me a station, and the kids come up and talk back home, talk to their mama on my radio. And we'd sing songs and stuff like that out in my garage."

He had to sign off when his life of crime caught up with him:

"And it took them about, oh, I guess a year before they caught me. And they come out—the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] come out and Bob [Robert] Van Wie. He was captain of police. And he came out, and they loaded my stuff up in the back of an old touring car. It was about 1929, 1930 model, A Models, and load my stuff up and carry it off. Mama said, ‘What are they—what are they going to do to you?' And I said, ‘I don't know.' And she said, ‘They're going to send you to penitentiary.' (laughter)"

Goodson McKee, longtime announcer on WACO, explains his involvement in pirate radio while at Waco High in the 1940s:

"I was a member of the Radio Club. And a good friend of mine, Mr. [Raymond] Franks, he and I were in the Radio Club together, and he was an electronic whiz. And we put together—I had a record player, played records in the mornings before school. And he was smart enough to put together an electronic transmitter, and we went on the air. It was the first pirate radio station in this area. But anyway, we had the radio station on the air for a while, and he could hear it clear across the river. We decided we'd better not get in trouble, so we shut it down."

Pirate radio stations continue to broadcast, with many streaming over the Internet. For some owners, these stations are a way to rebel against the high costs of proper licenses and to denounce authority. Pirate stations are able to hide from the law because equipment is easy to come by and the space required to transmit, minimal.

Bakelite radios were popular at the time Armstrong and McKee broadcast pirate stations.

Hear two radio enthusiasts discuss pirate radio in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Pirate Radio
(03:15 )

Original Airdates: October 12, 13, 15 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

At one time, the approach of cold weather signaled for many rural Americans in the South the time to begin planning for the annual hog-killing. It wasn't pretty but provided food for the coming winter months.

Louise Murphy, who grew up in Falls County in the twenties and thirties, describes some of the preparations involved in a hog-killing:

"We would have to get the old pot full of hot water and get us a barrel and get us a place to hang this hog. We had to have a cold day to get it so we could get our meat cold."

Thomas Wayne Harvey recalls what his father did before killing a hog in October of '44 in Waco:

"He had to dig a pit. And what he did, he went and got a fifty-five gallon drum and he dug a pit and he put the drum in there at a forty-five degree angle. And at the bottom end of the barrel, he built a fire pit that would heat that drum, and he'd fill it full of water until it was almost level of coming out at the top. After he built his pit, he built an A-frame directly above the barrel."

While many hogs were struck down with a single gunshot, Murphy, along with Estelle Pederson, explains what her father did:

Murphy: "He would take the ax, the back of the ax, and hit the hog in the head. And this would idle the hog until he took the butcher knife and just nearly sliced his head off."

Pederson: "It's awful how it was."

Murphy: "And, in the meantime, he would get a little singletree that come off of the wagon. Singletree. First thing we had to do was hang that hog up by that singletree and let all the blood come out."

Harvey relates the next step in the process:

"And then they gut it. And after they gut it, then they put the hog in this boiling water head first. They'd pull the hog back out, and it was so hot you had to have gloves to touch the hog. But what they did, they'd take a piece of board with a sharp edge on it, and they'd scrape the hair off the hog. And that hog would turn to a real pretty pink, and they'd do that—if the hog was too big, then they'd turn it around and stick it in the barrel backwards, you know, until the hog was completely hairless."

There was an art to scraping a hog, as Murphy explains:

"We'd start scraping. I—anybody that could get around that hog had a knife, and you'd scrape all that hair off. And you don't cut the meat. You got to know how to do it or you get—you get a little spanking. You got to know not to cut the meat."

The hog was then ready to be disassembled, processed, and stored, with no part being wasted. Nowadays, pork items can be found year-round in grocery stores, thanks to refrigeration and freezing. But once upon a time pork was on the dinner table only during certain months of the year.

A wild hog in Central Texas.

Hear about the process of killing a hog in Central Texas in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Hog-killing
(03:17 )

Airdates: October 19, 20, 22

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

A tradition since 1909, Baylor Homecoming invites former graduates from near and far to return to Waco, visit with former classmates and professors, and get lost in the Baylor spirit.

Former Baylor board of trustee Orba Lee Malone recalls an idea he came up with shortly after being the youngest person elected to the board in 1952:

"There were two meetings a year for the whole board: one in the fall and one in the spring. And we alternated: one of those meetings was in Waco, and the other would be in Dallas one year, and the following year it would be in Houston. It would meet at the College of Medicine in Houston—Baylor University Hospital was known as then—in the other meeting. Fall and spring. I remember making a motion very early that we have the fall meeting in Waco to coincide with the homecoming because I'd seen so many of the men were Baylor alumni anyway who many would want to go to homecoming, and I thought we'd even have a better attendance if we had it during the homecoming time: meet on Friday noon of homecoming and then take care of business after lunch, you know, till it's time to go. I sold the board on that."

Malone describes the effect that attending homecoming had on his sons:

"Well, I started taking my wife and boys, older boys. It was a great time. My wife and I never would sit down and talk to any one of our children about going to Baylor. The truth of the matter was, we didn't have to. We started taking them to homecoming before they were started to school. They just got brainwashed that way. I didn't realize. It was my custom, by the way—I put the boys to bed. I'd go in and talk a little while; then we'd have our nighty-night prayers. And they were to be in bed by eight o'clock. And I put them to bed one night. I hear that, well, they're talking. And this is the second and third boys talking at the time. The oldest boy was still up doing some homework. So I went in, in a little while and told them, said, "Well, sons, you know, it's time to go to sleep." And they were having fun talking. "Well, what were you talking about?" And John, the second son, said, "Well, David and I were just talking, Dad, about when we play football for Baylor." (laughter) And those two boys hadn't even started to school yet. But they saw the bear pen and the bears the first thing, and that's the outstanding thing that they remembered about that first trip to Baylor was the bears. But they were hooked."

All five of Malone's children, four sons and a daughter, would attend Baylor, proving that the excitement of a Baylor Homecoming can be hard to shake. Malone remained on the board of trustees until 1965. The board of trustees is now the Baylor Board of Regents, which still meets during homecoming.

The Bear Pit on Baylor's campus, seen here in the 1950s, is a popular spot to visit during homecoming. (Photo property of Vivian Crowson)

Hear a former Baylor board of trustee discuss homecoming in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Baylor Homecoming and Orba Lee Malone
(03:11 )

Original Airdates: October 26, 27, 29 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially when it involves their neck of the woods.

Around the summer of 1915, South Waco found itself with a resident ghost. Mary Kemendo Sendón, who was in high school at the time, recalls when her aunt first spotted the other-worldly figure:

"She had been sitting by the window that night. And the next morning she told my mother, she said, ‘You know, I saw something down the street last night. I think I saw a ghost. I was looking out the window,' and says, ‘I was half asleep, and all of a sudden I saw this figure in a long, flowing, white robe coming down the street.' And she said, ‘I got up to get a better look, and by the time I got up, that figure disappeared.' Well, my mother thought maybe it was a dream that she had, you know, and no more was said. Well, and another night or two passed, and the same thing happened."

News of the mysterious appearances got out, and the Waco newspaper covered the story:

"It said ‘Ghost of South Tenth Street' and had our address. It said across the street from our address. And it was—it really was a sensation because that night people were coming, sitting on the curb in front of our house up and down the street. They lined the entire street, sitting on the curb, waiting to see [if they] were going to see the ghost. It went on for two or three nights. They didn't give up. Well, it got to the point where they were bringing their lunch and eating their lunch and even—you know, of course, they—thank goodness they didn't have radios in those days because they would have—we would have had music all up and down the street. But it was noisy. They would bring bedrolls and sleep out there until early hours of the morning because when my aunt saw this, it was around three o'clock in the morning. So they wouldn't come in until about ten, just when we were ready to go to peace, and there they were."

Interest gradually dwindled, and people stopped flocking to their address at night. But Sendón describes what happened one night a little later on when she and her sister were sleeping in the front hall:

"We had hardly gone to sleep when there was a tap on the door. I jumped up, and my dad heard it at the same time, and he was right behind me. And there stood this figure in a white robe—white nightgown it was—with a teacup in her hand. My father said, ‘What do you want?' She said, ‘Do you have any whiskey?' My father said no. Well, she started down the steps with her teacup."

It turned out that the ghost of South Tenth Street was a neighbor's alcoholic cousin who was visiting from Chicago. The neighbor finally confided in Sendón's father that he could not keep her from roaming the streets at night in search of whiskey. So the mystery of the ghost was solved, but with a heartbreaking finding.

A Waco newspaper article dubbed the ghostly figure the 'Ghost of South Tenth Street' and brought crowds of people to the neighborhood.

Tune In

Listen to the South Waco ghost story that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Ghost of South Tenth Street
(03:08 )

Original Airdates: November 2, 3, 5 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

For more than a century, the majority of American women were denied the right to vote. Scores of determined suffragettes who wanted to reverse this injustice spoke out through publications, lectures, rallies, and appearances before legislators. Finally, these efforts paid off with the ratification in August 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment, which states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir was a student at Baylor in 1920 and recalls events surrounding the ratification:

"I remember parades they had in Waco, and there were a lot of women dressed in white on a float, and they were carrying banners or saying, ‘We want the right to vote,' or something like that. I remember how thrilled my mother was that she got to vote in the 1920 election. She was interested in voting in the gubernatorial election as well as the national election. She was thrilled that she could vote."

Martha Lena Emmons, also a student at Baylor during the amendment's adoption, describes an editorial cartoon concerning women's suffrage:

"But I remember one cartoon that I saw one time (laughs) where there was a lady policeman in Chicago—I believe was the newspaper that had it. And a cartoon came out, showed an old bum with a lady with a policeman's costume on, and she had a hat pin. And she said, ‘Now, get a move on.' And this old bum said, ‘Who say that the pin ain't mightier than the sword?' (laughs) And she was prodding him along with a hat pin. But, oh, that'd been the latest/there'd been the ladies(??) movement always, you know."

Emmons explains her reaction to the new law:

I remember very well here in Baylor that Mrs. Russell, who was an aide of Mrs. Claypool, was lecturing to us one time or talking with a group of us about how to vote and where to vote and the responsibility of voting. She said, ‘I did not seek it, but it's our responsibility now,' and that was sort of—oh, it's always been my attitude: (interviewer sneezes) I didn't seek it, but we had it, and it's our responsibility. And the tragedy of it has been that a great many have not bothered to exercise this privilege which they fit, bled, and died to get and all that sort of thing. But so is true of any of our privileges."

Interviewer: "Do you recall your first vote?"

"Very well! I don't know how I would have made it if Pa Davis hadn't shown me what to do. I was teaching in Calvert, Texas, and we went down to the city hall to vote. And Mr. Davis, whom we called Pa Davis because we took our meals over there and they were just such a sweet old couple that looked after us and called us 'our kids,' their kids and all that. And when I saw him over there helping run that thing, oh, I just felt so relieved. And I dashed over, and I said, ‘Pa Davis, show me what to do and where to go,' and he did, you know. Yes, I remember very well my first vote, um-hm."

The court case Leser v. Garnett, which reached the Supreme Court in 1922, argued the Nineteenth Amendment was not valid. But in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court stated the amendment was constitutional on all points brought into question.

Women practicing their new right to vote.

Hear women discuss the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Nineteenth Amendment
(03:37 )

Airdates: November 9, 10, 12

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the war on the Western Front officially ended, in accordance with the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany. Many of the allied countries soon after declared November 11 as Armistice Day, an official holiday to commemorate the final cease-fire on the Western Front and honor the nearly 10 million military deaths and 7 million civilian deaths during World War I.

Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir was a freshman at Baylor when World War I ended. She remembers how she first learned of the news:

"The whistles all blew. I don‘t know why they blew early in the morning before we awakened. I guess the news just got to Waco and they began blowing then. But we were all—jumped out of our beds and began rejoicing because we knew then that my older brother would get to come home safely."

Louie Edward Mayberry, who lived in San Antonio, recalls that November 11, 1918 for him and his cousin began with an encounter with some bullies as they were on their way to sell newspapers outside the Lanier Hotel:

"Before we got our papers, we came across a crowd of little boys, paperboys. Most of them were Hispanic boys, and we were the only two black ones there. And he saw that ring of boys, and he looked over in there. He said, ‘That's my partner.' And they were—they had a little poor—little Mexican boy down. They had knocked his papers out of his hand. They were whipping him. And my cousin waded through there, and what a fight! And, of course, I was right behind my cousin to see that they didn't hurt him. And he came out of the crowd with this little boy. He was crying. (laughs) So we put him between us so we could watch him, so if those guys came up there and started anything again, we could go out there and take up for him. And he stood out there and sold his papers that day. And after a while, the extras come out: ‘Extra! Extra! The war is over!' And the town went wild."

Mayberry describes the celebrations in the streets of San Antonio that followed the cease-fire:

"Girls were all over town, and they had boxes of powder, talcum powder. And they were slinging that powder on everybody, and I was just as white as I could be and smelled good. (laughter) Oh, we headed home to tell Mama and my aunties. And so we came back, and they had a parade that evening, people out of Fort Sam Houston, Camp Travis. They had a big parade: their guns and those big old army trucks in those days and soldiers marching. They had the Kaiser there in effigy, you know. Oh, gee, that was a day to remember."

After World War II, Armistice Day became Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in several other countries. On November 11, people in many parts of the world still pause at 11 a.m. for a moment of silence to pay respect to all of the lives lost during wartime, a tradition begun in England in 1919.

After hearing of the cease-fire on the Western Front on Nov. 11, 1918, people filled the streets in celebration.

Hear Texans discuss reactions to news of WWI's end in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Armistice Day
(03:39 )

Original Airdates: November 16, 17, 19 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Madison Cooper is a legendary figure in Waco. He put the city in the national spotlight in 1952 when his novel Sironia landed on the New York Times' Best Seller List and was known about town as an
eccentric bachelor. But Cooper's greatest contribution to Waco was his philanthropic spirit, from sponsoring civic programs to establishing the Cooper Foundation in 1943 for the purpose of bettering Waco.

Martha Lacy Howe, great-niece of Madison Cooper, visited as a child the Cooper home on Austin Avenue, now home of the Cooper Foundation. She recalls the housekeeper:

"Bertha was there. After Mrs. Cooper passed away, Madison asked Bertha if she would stay and do laundry and serve him meals. And she was thrilled to do that. She lived in the garage—up at the top of the garage. And she was a wonderful cook and a lovely person. And she would call my mom—we lived on the other side of the lake—and she said, ‘Next time you come in town, come to the house, and I've made some cookies,' and—or one time a big cake. I mean, you just don't forget things like this. (laughter) And we would go in that porte-cochère on the side of the house and up those steps. And the kitchen was—always smelled good, and it was nice and warm."

Howe recounts a comical story about her great-uncle and Citizens National Bank:

"He would walk down Austin Avenue every day, and he wore kind of shabby clothes a lot; he worked at that. (laughs) He knew how to look nice. My grandmother would tell me all this. And he would walk down to the bank and go in where Mildred Rast, my grandfather and my father's secretary―we called her Pud. She was quite famous. But he would go down there and go through her trash and use her used carbon paper; take it home, and he wrote Sironia up in the top parts of the Cooper home and wrote short stories before that, but I don't think they sold very good—but on used carbon paper. I mean, I think he could have probably bought a small package at the dime store, don't you think? (laughter) But he used Mildred Rast's used carbon paper that she had already thrown away. (laughter) But he kind of worked at that—that aura that he—he worked at it; he liked it."

Cooper never wanted a fuss made about his philanthropy, as Howe describes:

"He had a reputation of being very tightfisted, but I believe he was a far more generous—even with his family, than he wanted anybody else to know. He gave a lot to Waco, but he gave a lot anonymously. He gave to the Community Chest, and they thought, Well, my goodness, Madison's giving some money to us; maybe he's interested. And they asked him to be on the board, and he never gave them another nickel. (laughs) So he would give it all anonymously."

Madison Cooper died at 62 in 1956 and left his entire estate of nearly $3 million to the Cooper Foundation. Using the income from this bequeathal, the foundation has been able to award more than $20 million in grants over the years to various Waco projects.

Living Stories is funded in part by a Cooper Foundation grant to the Institute for Oral History.

The Cooper Foundation, former home of Madison Cooper, on Austin Avenue.

Hear memories of the eccentric bachelor and his home from the perspective of a great-niece in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Madison Cooper
(03:47 )

Original Airdates: November 23, 24, 26 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

No one particularly wants to spend Thanksgiving away from home
and loved ones, but those serving in the military often have no choice.

Robert Packard, popular Baylor physics teacher, served in army intelligence in Hawaii during WWII, intercepting messages from the Japanese. He describes a humorous incident that occurred on a Thanksgiving shortly after World War II ended, while he was still in
the army:

"Then they called in and said for us to prepare to fly up to Tokyo. What we were going to do is go and copy Russian traffic. We were going to monitor the Russians. But they decided to send us by ship. Well, a captain was in charge of the ship, and he called me in. He says, ‘I'm going to make you the first sergeant of this ship.' And I said fine. Well, you do what you're told. And he said, ‘But you have a special problem. We've got five hundred new graduates of West Point.' He said, ‘These little lieutenants have no idea of what to do in an emergency.' Said, ‘So if we get in trouble or get hit by a typhoon'—and we were supposed to go into a typhoon—he said, ‘you take charge of them; make sure you keep them under control.' So I did. Off of Okinawa, we caught fire. They were cooking our Thanksgiving meal, and the ship was—there was high waves. The grease got out on the stove and caught fire. So captain says, ‘Take those officers up to the top deck and calm them down.' And so that's what I did, and then we put the fire out. And we limped into Tokyo Bay. That captain put into my military record that I was first sergeant and showed extreme skill as a leader."

Interviewer: "You got some points for that."

Mary Kemendo Sendón was a Waco High School student during WWI and recalls the soldiers who were training at Camp MacArthur:

"On Thanksgiving and Christmas, they would ask Waco people to invite soldiers to have things. Well, my dad would meet them in his shop, and he always would invite them come for Sunday dinner or for Thanksgiving, you know. And I remember we invited them on Thanksgiving, and they had been training that morning, and then they came on, had dinner at our house. And, you know, those boys were so hungry. (interviewer laughs) My mother just kept pushing the food at them and pushing the food. And they went back into the living room after we ate—we didn't have TV or anything. They just sit there and look at pictures and books and—you know, things like that and talk. Two of them sat there and went to sleep. Do you know they slept for about two hours sitting on the couch with their head thrown back. I always remember that sight of those two boys."

Advances in technology have made it easier for servicemen and women to communicate with family and friends on holidays, but nothing can take the place of physically being at home, surrounded by hugs and the smells of family recipes in the kitchen.

WWI servicemen enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner stateside

Hear a WWII soldier and a local host during WWI describe Thanksgiving during wartime in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Soldiers and Thanksgiving
(03:08 )

Original Airdates: November 30 and December 1, 3 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

When Dr. Robert H. Young came to Baylor in 1962 as chairman of the church music department, he brought with him an idea from the University of Southern California, where he had recently completed
his doctorate. Young wanted to recreate at Baylor the 16-member choral ensemble at USC called the Chamber Singers, and he debuted the new group in Roxy Grove Hall:

"In 1962, we did that very first program all in Music Hour. It was unique in that I used a technique that Dr. Hirt had used in Southern California of a curved table on the stage with a velvet cloth on it and candelabra and some trimmings, so to speak, and the women—the eight women sitting around the curved table with the eight men standing right back of them and, as it were, reading over their shoulder with the music on the table, you see. Well, that was unique for us here. No one had seen anything like that before. So we used that all the while until we went over to Armstrong Browning, and then it wasn't conducive to that anymore because of the space requirements for setting up the tables and doing all of that. And we needed the space we had in the Foyer of Meditation for the audience. And then that wasn't necessary any longer anyway. We had those steps there in the Foyer of Meditation, and so we went to that formation after that. But those first several years we used that table and that atmosphere."

The Armstrong Browning Library as a venue for the Chamber Singers was the suggestion of then-Baylor music student Robert A. Reid around the fall of 1967:

"Robert was doing a research project on the Brownings, and he came to me and asked me if we had ever considered singing over in the Foyer of Meditation. And I said, ‘No, but it sounds interesting, come to think of it.' And so we already had our program planned for Roxy Grove Hall, and we decided to do the first half of it, up to intermission, in Roxy Grove, make an announcement to the folks that we would go right across the street to Armstrong Browning, and although we didn't have chairs set up or anything of that sort, we would sing there the remainder of the program. Well, we did that, and there was an aura of wonder about it."

Interviewer: "I guess so."

"It was really amazing because we had never heard ourselves in there before, and the folks that came there were glad to stand for that remaining half of the program. That was it. We never went back to Roxy Grove or any other place, unless we were doing something special that required us to be elsewhere. But that became our performing home."

Over the years, the Chamber Singers have performed many of Dr. Young's compositions, and the ensemble continues to hold concerts in the Armstrong Browning Library. After Young retired in 1993, Dr. Donald Bailey and most recently Dr. Alan Raines followed as conductors of the ensemble.

Baylor Chamber Singers in their performing home, the Foyer of Meditation in the Armstrong Browning Library.

Hear Dr. Robert H. Young describe the beginnings of the chamber ensemble at Baylor in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Founding of Baylor Chamber Singers
(03:44 )

Airdates: December 7, 8, 10

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In the years leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the majority of Americans had no interest in war. The carnage of World War I was
still fresh on their minds, and many in America argued for a position
of isolationism. But feelings dramatically shifted on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese took America by surprise.

Lifelong aviation enthusiast Dick Cole graduated from Kelly Field in July of 1941 and was assigned to the 17th Bombardment Group in Pendleton, Oregon. He describes learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor during a stop his squadron made at March Field in California:

"When we arrived in March Field, why, Colonel [Otto] Peck gave everybody what they called open post, which meant that we could go anyplace we wanted to go as long as we were back by midnight on Sunday night. Everybody went to Hollywood, and we were in the Hollywood Plaza Hotel. When I heard about it, I was up and getting dressed, and the phone rang. And I had to be down in the lobby at ten o'clock to get a bus to go back to March."

After the attack, Cole's squadron began patrolling off the West Coast for Japanese submarines:

"They worked out a grid map, and we would fly so far out and then turn around and come back and go back and forth. Nobody in our group—or squadron—ever saw anything. Well, we saw a lot of whales. [Everett W.] "Brick" Holstrom, who was one of the raiders, was in the 95th Squadron—they were up at Everett, Washington—he sank a sub in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But the rest of ours was just looking at the water. (both laugh)"

George C. McDowell, who worked in army air force ordnance during WWII, was stationed at Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky, in late 1941. He recalls when he heard about the bombing:

"I remember we had a—there was a big party the night—sixth of December there. About nine o'clock in the morning, I got a phone call, said—my wife was going down to visit her folks down at Fort Sill. So I got a phone call and says, ‘Have you turned your radio on?' And I said no. They said, ‘Well, turn it on.' (laughs) And about noon, why, got a call from base to come out there. And Junius Wallace Jones had the whole staff out there. He says—I remember he walked out and says, ‘Gentlemen, today we go to work.' (both laugh)"

McDowell explains his first impressions about the news:

"I wasn't quite comprehending what it—what had—they didn't say all the battleships had been sunk or anything like that. They just said the Japs had struck and were attacking."

On December 8, President Roosevelt delivered his famous Day of Infamy Speech to Congress, as well as to the American public over the airwaves, and less than an hour later Congress declared war on Japan. Though devastating, the attack did not bring about the widespread, long-term damage to the U.S. Navy that the Japanese had hoped for. And most importantly, the Japanese unintentionally united the American people like no politician could have done.

Battleships after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Listen to WWII veterans describe how they first learned of the Japanese attack on US soil in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Pearl Harbor
(03:27 )

Original Airdates: December 14, 15, 17 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

The clothing industry in the United States was at its peak in the mid-1900s. Reports show that by 1957, Americans were spending more than $25 billion annually on clothes, nearly twice the amount spent
on automobile purchases and eight times the figure spent on private education. Waco was home to several clothing factories during this time that employed many women—companies like Hawk & Buck and
J. M. Wood.

Estelle Pederson, who moved to Waco in the early 1940s, worked for nearly forty-five years in the clothing industry, much of that time as an inspector. She describes the demands of the work:

"They wanted you to make production, and that's for sure. And you really had to work hard to make production because if you didn't make production they would lay you off sure as the world. And, well, I was lucky all those years. I made production most of the time. But I mean it wasn't fooling around. I mean you had to work. And they inspected your work, and if they find a repair they throw it back at you. They'd get on to you. You had to do the best you could, and they sure didn't like for you to let some repairs go through, but it is hard to catch everything. But I tried to do the best I could and fast as I could, and it wasn't easy. Then they'd time you right there and see how fast you—if you was just playing over. And if you could do so-and-so, well, you could do it all the time. And they'd stand behind you, and you wouldn't know they was timing you, and so they'd catch you. (laughs) So that was kind of—if I knew they was looking—watching you, it makes you nervous."

Pederson explains one way the industry changed over the years:

"Seem like they wasn't quite as strict when we first went to work. We could get by. Sometimes we run out of work, we'd sit around a little bit. But there at last, it had changed quite a bit. They was really strict. And you had to keep busy, or they'd send you home. (laughs) Well, you did learn to do different things so when you did run out of work—I even learned to press and steam press. (laughs) Oh, that was when you sure had to watch your fingers so you didn't press your fingers."

Long-time Waco resident Louise Murphy worked as a seamstress in the forties. She recalls when her employer introduced an assembly line into the factory:

"Now, when we first went to work, our work was one machine to the other, one machine to the other. And we were on army khaki pants. Well, they put these pants up on conveyor, and it went from one—that keeps you from having to reach back and get your work because that conveyer brought your work to you. And they thought it would save time. That's whenever we began to have trouble because if one stop and does repair, the whole line is affected, see."

In the 1970s, the clothing industry began to fade in America, as it became more cost effective to import clothing from countries such as China, South Korea, and Taiwan. But in recent years the industry has seen a boost from American retailers who want to restock and respond to fads quickly, as well as have more control over inventory and quality.

Women on the job in a 1950s textile mill. (Courtesy of Getty Images)

Hear two Waco residents discuss their time as employees of local textile factories in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Working in Clothing Factories
(03:46 )

Original Airdates: December 21, 22, 23 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

For most families during the Great Depression, Christmas was not a time for extravagance. Money and jobs were difficult to come by, and it was all some families could do to keep food on the table.

Retired Baylor physics professor Robert Packard remembers how hard times called for creativity. He describes a plan he came up with while visiting his cousins in the Temple area one Christmas during the Great Depression. Children looking forward to Santa's visit this year should not listen to the following:

"They lived in the country. And so Christmas, when it came, we got no presents. We might get a bag of—an apple or something. So I told my cousin, I said, 'Why don't we kidnap Santa Claus? He's got all these gifts, and he bypasses us, but he brings us something.' So we went to bed on Christmas Eve early. The bedroom I was in—and I was the only boy, and my sister and then my cousins were girls. So they had a room, and I had a small room. So anyway, we climbed out the window—out in the country—with a rope that we were going to tie up Santa Claus. (laughter) But we were standing there in the cold and waiting and waiting and waiting and probably shivering, and then we happened to look in the window and see our parents taking toys off the top shelf. So suddenly we realized there was no Santa Claus, but we knew we now could direct our interest directly to the parents."

Ruth and Charles Armstrong, both longtime Waco residents, remember the gifts they received as youngsters during the Depression:

"Now sometimes I would get a doll—not a real, real expensive doll but nice dolls, you know—and socks, a little iron, just typical little things that little girls would like."

"I was more fortunate, I guess. I don't know of a Christmas that I didn't get at least one large—what I call a large gift would be a full-size wagon. And I've got a picture there on my new bicycle, and I've got another picture where I was in a little old car you sit in there and pedal it, you know. But I had two older brothers that worked and my daddy, too—I was the youngest one for several years there—so I got a few extra things that some of the other kids didn't get. But as far as times, our times were just as—got rough, too. We had a hard time, too. But seem like on Christmas I came out ahead in the neighborhood."

Mr. Armstrong describes the tradition of hanging a stocking:

"Everybody hung their socks up. We didn't have a fireplace, but we'd hang them up wherever it was convenient, you know, around close to the tree after we started having a tree because we'd still put gifts under the tree. But before we had a tree we'd hang up near the stove, and the bigger the sock the better. I'd get the biggest sock I could find, hang up there, and you could always count on fireworks. There was always some firecrackers in there, always apples and oranges in there."

As hard as times were during the Great Depression, families with some type of income still managed to make sure the children had gifts at Christmas. With the current economy and ever-increasing commercialization of Christmas, it's helpful to look back and realize that children do not need heaps of presents to grow up with wonderful memories of Christmas.
 

Children waiting for Santa to come down the chimney, circa 1930. (Courtesy of Bettmann/CORBIS)

Hear Central Texans discuss favorite Christmas memories from their childhood in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 

Christmas Gifts in the Great Depression
(03:15 )

Original Airdates: December 28, 29, 31 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

In Tennessee in 1866, a year after the Civil War ended, six Confederate veterans formed an organization called the Ku Klux Klan for amusement. Shortly after, local Klan groups began popping up all over the South and quickly became synonymous with hate and terror. Klan activity began to taper off in the late 1800s, but shortly after World War I began, a new Klan emerged and flourished nationwide, boasting around five million members at its height in the early 1920s.

Avery Downing, former superintendent of Waco ISD, recalls the prominence of the Klan in Northeast Texas in the early 1900s:

"The Ku Klux Klan problem was an extremely sensitive and explosive issue in my county, very muchly so. And my family was anti-Ku Klux Klan from the word go, absolutely. And you have to understand that that meant considerable criticism from many, many, many others in the community because Ku Klux Klan had quite a following."

Downing describes an encounter his uncle had with the Klan while in high school:

"My uncle and one of his classmates were debaters, and they loved to debate the question of Ku Klux Klan. And one night in a small church north of Hallsville, a Ku Klux Klan assembly of some sort of a service or ceremony in this small church. And my uncle and his friend went out there and defrocked one of the leading Ku Klux Klan members—and he was the pastor of the Methodist church in north Marshall—and caused quite a furor."

Waco native Helen Geltemeyer remembers the Ku Klux Klan in Waco in the late 1920s and a meeting she went to with her mother and sister:

"Well, they met quite a bit out on Speight Street. That was one of their biggest main—I mean biggest meeting place. And my family decided to go in that Model T car out there to find out what they were going to do. I'd say that's way out at like—I guess Twenty-eight [Street] or Thirtieth [Street] and Speight—way out, we called it. That was a highway to go to Temple—the Temple highway. But here they were out all on this field. And we got out to run down there to see what they were going to do, and they had already lit those sticks and marching and doing little things together. And Allene and I were standing there and saw Mr. Russell."

Interviewer: "Which was the neighbor across the street from you?"

"Amen—who ran the store. And we yelled, ‘Oh, hi, Mr. Russell!' We saw his feet. We knew him by his feet. We couldn't tell otherwise. (laughs) And Mama grabbed us and ran us to the car and went home because she said we were going to get her in trouble. So we didn't get to stay to see what was on, but they didn't have any murder or anything that I remember. Otherwise, that'd have been vivid in my mind."

The Great Depression severely hampered the Klan, but it was not the end, for desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement resulted in a third resurgence of the Klan. Today, membership in Klan chapters is estimated between five and eight thousand, with the majority of members in the South.

The Klan initiates a new member, circa 1930.

Hear accounts of the Ku Klux Klan in early twentieth-century Texas in the episode that aired on KWBU-FM:

Ku Klux Klan
(03:43 )

Original Airdates: January 4, 5, 7 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Merriam-Webster defines philanthropy as "goodwill to fellowmen; especially : active effort to promote human welfare." The word is by no means new. The ancient Greeks called it philanthropia and thought the idea was the key to civilization. Waco is fortunate to claim several philanthropists as its own.

Jim Hawkins, founder of J-Hawk Funding Corporation, reflects on why he gives:

"The only difference in our community and any other community is the people in it. And those people can make the difference. And if you share with the community to build a better community, it's going to pay off. You're going to—you're going to get gratification many times over. That's what makes it so, for me—to—when I go through town now and see the projects that they said that we couldn't do, that we've done. You know, I never will forget in 1965 when I was president of the chamber of commerce—junior chamber of commerce, there were three projects that we identified that needed to be done. As a young man then, it seemed like it was more than you can ever expect: low-water dam, the junior college, and the convention center. We didn't have a convention center. And we set out, got all three of those. And, I mean, looking back on it now, when you go by all this, you're able to really enjoy the history and knowing what can be done if you really put your mind to it. The people in the community make the difference. And you make it what you want it to be."

Bernard Rapoport discusses why he founded the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Foundation after selling American Income Life Insurance Company:

"I look up in the sky, and, for me, I say, ‘Well, there's something greater than I am. And that's God. And the rest of it is you have to behave yourself and accept responsibility.' Now, so many of these religious people, to me, are not religious because they don't accept responsibility. For example, when we did—when we sold the company, we got a lot of money, and we put half of it in the foundation. Some of my friends said, Well, you're crazy. Why did you do that? I said, ‘Because I owed it.' Said, Who'd you owe it to? I said, ‘To society.' I said, ‘Anybody that thinks they're a self-made man is an idiot. I mean, if I had to make a list of all the people that helped me get to where I am,' I said, ‘there's not enough paper in the world. And I was good at managing, and I was good at motivating, and so we were able to build a company. But how many people do you think helped me do that?' The only guy that I can't stand is a self-made man because I know I'm talking to an idiot."

The lives of these generous men speak well to the adage that money only brings happiness when you use it to help others.

Living Stories is funded in part by a Cooper Foundation grant to the Institute for Oral History.

Jim Hawkins cites McLennan Community College as an example of a project made possible by community support.

Listen to Waco-area philanthropists discuss the reasons behind their giving in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Why They Give
(03:07 )

Airdates: January 11, 12, 14

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

The Battle of the Bulge, known as Watch on the Rhine in Germany, took place from December 16, 1944 through January 25 of the next year along the German-Belgian border. Germany hoped to split the Allied line of advance in half and then surround and destroy the Allied armies. With the help of extreme winter temperatures, the fight turned out to be the deadliest battle for the American military in Europe during WWII.

Dr. Howard C. Williams, who grew up in the Port Arthur area, served in the sound division of the sound and flash unit of the 291st Field Artillery Observation Battalion in WWII. He recalls the first days of the Battle of the Bulge:

"My part of it was just cold, snow, sleeping out under a tree. It was horrible, horrible. And we were shelled regularly, and we lost four or five men in my organization. Finally, it settled down enough that we were able to establish our—you know, our sound units and things like that."

Williams explains the role of the sound and flash unit in the battle:

"You set up at the frontline a series of microphones, about six, seven, eight of them, and put a thing about like a seismograph machine in back of that, and one or two poor souls went clear out in front of the line or as far as you could go. And when a German cannon fired, boom, you pressed the button. Sound waves come back, and as they come back, they hit the first microphone, second, third. And then that could be plotted. From that you could compute real rapidly where the cannon fired from, and then you immediately forwarded that information to the artillery, and they started covering that whole area. And the other part of it was they called flash unit. There were two or three of them, kind of like survey transits, and they'd set them up in high places. They'd watch, and when they'd see a cannon flash, they would try to [plot a] a triangle on it."

Chester P. Rutigliano of Del Rio served under Patton in the Third Army during the Battle of the Bulge. He describes the harsh conditions:

"We was there, I don't know how many days there, fighting and cold. Oh, was it cold. Snow. And we didn't have much clothes. See, if you had a lot of clothes, you don't mind it. But if you didn't—half of the guys got frozen hands and fingers and their legs. It was real bad. And I always tell the guys, ‘When you get in a foxhole, exercise. Get yourself going because [if] you don't, you're going to freeze. And you're going to lose your arm, you're going to lose your leg, your toes.' And some of the guys won't listen. They just sat in the foxhole like that. (demonstrates position) And when the time to go and they couldn't move; their foot is already frozen. A lot of them lost their foot. But some of the guys listen to me; then they got out okay."

By the end of the Battle of the Bulge, America had suffered 81,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed and more than 23,000 captured. But despite heavy losses, the Allies prevailed and by February of 1945 had regained the ground lost during the battle and started attacking all along the Western Front. With Germany never able to recover from the Battle of the Bulge, the Allies were able to overtake German territory and within a few months bring an end to the war in Europe.

Williams and Rutigliano both recall the frigid conditions they faced in the Battle of the Bulge.

Hear two Texas WWII veterans discuss their experiences in one of the last major German offensives on the Western Front in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Battle of the Bulge
(03:41 )

Original Airdates: February 1, 2, 4 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

For African American musicians, traveling in the South was a
challenge long before the Civil Rights Movement, with hotels, restaurants, and other businesses often denying them service. But as the movement heightened racial tensions in the South, black musicians had to be especially on guard.

Vocalist Madeline Thompson, who traveled during the sixties with the gospel groups of Clara Ward, recalls in a telephone interview what could happen on the road:

"We had the skinheads that would try to run us off the road; drivers that, you know, if you needed light or too much light or whatever. So it was very scary. And sometimes Mrs. Ward would say to us — Clara's mother — ‘You guys just pray because nobody out here to help us but us and Jesus.'"

Reuben Burton describes an incident in the sixties involving the Rev. Eddie Franklin, a fellow member of the Victory Travelers quartet:

"We was in Kentucky. You know, that's the heart of the Klansmen."

Interviewer: "Oh, yeah."

"And he went to buy some baloney. He got a nickel worth of baloney (laughs) and gave the man a twenty-dollar bill, and he said, ‘Cut it thick as possible.' So the man got angry. So he cut the baloney, and he went, got change and put it in some water. Franklin looked at him; he said, ‘That ain't my money. That's not my money.' So everybody, Whoa, what? What? He said no. Said, 'Ain't my money.' He said, ‘Go get my money.' So we all—you know, we all came back. We had to stand up. You know, what are we, to die for whatever? Then the guy got scared after he saw we wasn't running from him. He gave him the money. Then he came to us and told us who he was. He was one of the—was a part of the Klan, one of the leader. And he call you ‘boy.' He said, ‘You boys have changed—made me look at you boys different. I was supposed to shot y'all, but I didn't.' Bad part about it, Franklin had a gun on him, we didn't know it. (laughter)"

These touring musicians often found refuge in the homes of local blacks. Gospel singer Rev. Dr. Issac Whittmon fondly describes the time his ensemble stayed in a woman's home while performing in Marshall, Texas:

"There was a snowstorm, but it wasn't in that city. But it was coming that way. And so we were trying to get through with the last program that night and get on out and beat the snowstorm. And so she told us, she says, ‘Well, I hope y'all beat the snowstorm.' She said, ‘But if you don't, you can come on back to the house. But you're going to have to sing for your breakfast.' And so, you know, we laughed because we just knew we was going to beat the snowstorm. Well, here we come dragging back luggage and all, car full of snow. And so she opened the door. She was so happy that we came back. And the next morning, she fixed us this good breakfast and all like that. We come out, and we sit down at the table. And she says, ‘Unh-uh. No, you—no, no. No, you can't eat.' And we said, Why? You know, we laughed because we had been at her house for a week. We laughed, you know. And so we started back, get ready to say our blessing. She said, ‘Unh-uh!' She says, ‘You got to sing.' We had to sing three songs before she would let us eat breakfast. That was the most funniest thing! She had an upright old piano in there. But, you know, I think about her often, for somebody to love what you do that much, you know."

Racism was certainly not confined to the South. But black musicians traveling these states during the Civil Rights Movement had to face the suspicions and hatred thrown their way by those who sensed and feared the coming changes.

Madeline Thompson describes the fear of traveling at night to the next scheduled performance.

Hear musicians talk about life on the road in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

African American Musicians Traveling through the South during the Civil Rights Movement
(03:53 )

Original Airdates: February 8, 9, 11 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

When Dr. Earl R. Martin was fifteen and a student at Anacostia High School in Washington, DC, he laid eyes on a girl who he couldn't get off his mind. He confessed his feelings to a friend one day during an off hour:

"Bob and I were walking the halls. I knew where she was in class, in a drafting class. And the door to the classroom had a window, and she was sitting high on a stool in this drafting course. I pointed to her, and I said, "‘Bob, that's the girl I'm going to marry.'"

Earl and Jane began dating. Later on in 1945, when Jane was a senior in high school and Earl a freshman in college, he spent Christmas evening with Jane at her family's home:

"Her mother had made some—we called them Toll House cookies then, chocolate chip. The cookies were on a table in the kitchen. I'd eaten some, and we were sitting on the couch courting. And she said something about, ‘Do you want some more cookies?' And I said, ‘Sure.' So we moved to go to the kitchen to get the cookies, but the archway to the kitchen had mistletoe. And we stopped there, and I took advantage of the mistletoe. Not that I really needed it, but I took—but I did. (both laugh) And then and there I—I'm not sure that I went there that night intending to propose. I'm not clear about that in my own mind, but doesn't matter. I said it and I meant it, and it stunned her. Really set her back. And she said, ‘Well, I have to think about it. Give me time.' So I ate another cookie (both laugh) and then said goodnight."

Earl was on pins and needles while Jane thought over the proposal:

"And I waited and waited and waited. We called—we talked on the phone. And finally, twelve days later, she said, ‘I'm ready to answer your question,' but she didn't say what it was. I went up to visit her that January the sixth, Shakespeare's twelfth night. And she didn't beat around the bush; she told me yes. And I was so elated because I was fearful. (laughs) I thought, You know, she is such a wonderful person, and I don't deserve her. And I didn't linger long from that occasion. It was a cold winter night in Washington, DC. We kissed goodnight, and I left the house and bounded down the steps from the porch and onto the sidewalk in front of her house, S Street Southeast, and down to the corner of Twenty-second Street.

"Turned the corner—there wasn't hardly anybody out—but I looked up ahead on the sidewalk, and here was this lone sailor coming up with his coat and sailor hat. And I—I stopped him, right in front of him. I looked him in the face, and I said, ‘She said yes!' And he looked at me, and he was startled. (both laugh) I said, ‘She said yes!' He said, ‘Good.' (both laugh) And we went on our way. So that was a glorious evening."

The Martins married two and a half years later on July 30, 1948. They would go on to have four children and spend twenty-five years in Africa as missionaries with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board.

Mistletoe hanging from the archway prompted a marriage proposal.

Listen to the story of a marriage proposal that occurred on the first Christmas after World War II ended, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

A Christmastime Proposal
(03:23 )

Original Airdates: February 15, 16, 18 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

From 1877 to 1990, Waco was home to Paul Quinn College, the oldest historically black college in the US west of the Mississippi River.

Dr. J. W. Yancy II served as Paul Quinn president from 1939 to 1942, but he first set foot on the campus in '36. Yancy explains he came to Waco from a teaching position at Prairie View College, at the request of then-Paul Quinn president A. S. Jackson:

"He wrote Mr. Banks—that was my mentor at Prairie View—that they wanted—see, it was a junior college. And a group of teachers didn't want to leave Waco and the area if you could send somebody, and they sent me. I did the upper classes, junior and senior, two summers. But I set up a study group, or extension school. In '38, they applied for senior rating."

Curtis L. Wilburn, later a fixture on the Paul Quinn campus as a professor, benefited from the college's new four-year status that Yancy helped implement. Wilburn earned a bachelor's degree in 1942 and describes the school during his student years:

"Oh, it was a traditionally small college school. We had an excellent faculty. It was a small faculty, but it was an excellent faculty. And I say it was an excellent faculty because in the class I graduated in, we had ten, and out of that ten we had five who chose education as a profession. And they all received a graduate degree from some of the most prestigious schools in the country."

Wilburn recalls favorite teachers and faculty members:

"I guess the one I was closest to was chairman of the history department, and he was more or less a favorite of mine, and I hope I was a favorite of his. He spent quite a bit of time with me. His name was Joseph Mosley. Mr. Mosley had both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from the University of Kansas, and he had done some additional graduate work at the University of Minnesota. And it was Mr. Mosley who first suggested the University of Minnesota to me as a graduate school. The dean at the school was a lady, a very charming lady. Her name was Mrs. Lewis Tindell Moore. And then physical education, we had Mr. White, and we had Coach Smith. But they were all very able, very able people. Now I mention the coaches, participating in athletics. Other than my major professor, Mr. Mosley, I was probably closest to my athletic coaches."

Paul Quinn College moved in 1990 to the former Bishop College campus in Dallas. In 2011, Paul Quinn won the Historically Black College or University of the Year Award.

Paul Quinn College campus in Waco around the turn of the century.

Hear a former Paul Quinn president and student tell their memories of the Waco campus, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Paul Quinn College, Circa 1940
(03:11 )

Original Airdates: February 22, 23, 25 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Proposals and marriages are usually cause for nervousness, and oftentimes fathers, though well-meaning, add to the anxiety.

Chester P. Rutigliano of Del Rio met his wife-to-be in his hometown of Ridgway, Pennsylvania, after he returned from service in WWII. He explains the difficulties his father brought to his proposal plans:

"To get engaged, my father said, ‘I'm going with you.' See, in Italian, he have to go with you. I said, ‘Okay, Pop. Tomorrow we're going to go there, and I'm getting engaged.' He said, ‘All right.' So we wait and—that next day—we wait and we wait and we wait. I said, ‘Where the hell is Pop?' I told my mother. ‘I don't know.' Finally, here he comes, drunk as hell. He said, ‘Chester, I'll go with you, and you give the ring to Rosie.' I said, ‘Pop, I can't take you because you go in that house and her mother's going to throw you out the door and me too. I can't.' ‘No, you can't go!'"

Rutigliano left his father at home that evening and went to Rosie's house alone to propose. He describes his father's reaction:

"Well, next morning, I got up. ‘Hey, Celestino!' ‘Yeah, Pop.' ‘I feel better. We'll go tonight. You give the ring to Rosie.' I said, ‘Pop, I hate to tell you; I already engage.' That did it. I thought the house going to explode. He got so mad at me: ‘You know I supposed to be there!' I said, ‘Yeah, Pop, but you were so dang drunk, I couldn't take you. That's why. So we got engaged last night.'"

Robert C. Martin of Victoria, former manager of radio station KNAL, recalls how he met a young woman from Sweden in early 1971:

"She was visiting her brother and sister-in-law, who were my neighbors. And they conveniently got ill, and I had to show her this part of the country. So it was my job; you know, we just had to do that. So we had a very beautiful, quick romance, and I proposed to her. And she said, ‘Well, I'll think about it.' And she went back to Sweden, and she left me waving with this sweaty palm, very nervous about it."

The girl from Sweden, Carin, said yes, and she returned to Texas to marry Martin in February of 1971. But Martin was not through yet being nervous:

"And that Christmas, I went back to Sweden and met her family. Of course, they probably are very anxious to find out what kind of guy did she marry in Texas. And in Sweden, they have what you call Schnapps. It's a liquor drink in a little, small container. And you drink this—you chugalug it—and then you bring it down, and you meet eyes with the person. And you say, ‘Skol, skol.' Well, her father gave me that treatment. And I thought, This man is really checking me out. (laughter) Boy, he locked eyes with me, and if I had any deficiencies they were going to show up immediately."

The Rutigliano and Martin couples both survived the actions of well-intentioned fathers to enjoy long-lasting, successful marriages.

Rutigliano's father threw a monkey wrench into his son's plans for a traditional Italian proposal.

Hear tales of fathers and fathers-in-law and the anxiety they can create for boyfriends and husbands, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Fathers and Fathers-in-Law and Marriage
(03:33 )

Airdates: March 1, 2, 4

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Milk cows played an integral part in the average farm in early twentieth-century America. As well as steady sources of dairy products, milk cows dictated a family's daily schedule and could bring in extra income.

Judge John F. Onion Jr. of Austin grew up on a farm in the San Antonio area in the 1930s and describes the abundance of milk:

"When you get four or five milk cows, you get an awful lot of milk. And after a while, we had so much milk—and I always remember the cream rising to the top on all the old bottles—that my mother decided that we didn't need all that cream. She bought a separator, and that separator had so many parts, I lost count—and particularly when you're having to try to clean it. And she sold milk to a local creamery called Knowlton's Creamery for a number of years. And we got milk in the icebox that was skim milk. And that's where I learned to like skim milk, and I never could go back to the heavy—the whole milk or anything of that nature."

Onion explains that the cows had to be milked, even in rough weather:

"The cows had to be milked twice a day. We had a creek, the Huebner Creek, that ran behind the house, and it had kind of a high outcropping of the rocks. And the water would go the other way most of the time, but sometimes you'd get these cows on the other side of the creek. And they couldn't cross the creek because of the swollen water, and they had to be milked. And, of course, they liked to eat when they were being milked, too. And I've seen, on a number of occasions, my mother, as short as she was, would go down to the creek and put a bucket on her head and wade across the creek when it was running rapidly and get on the other side. And she would have some food in there, enough to keep them eating while she milked them. And she'd, a lot of times, let the milk go on the ground because she wanted to relieve the cows of the pressure on their udders."

But milking cows is not for everyone, as Onion recalls:

"If I could avoid it I did. I didn't particularly like milking the cow. (interviewer laughs) Sometimes those cows didn't milk just the way the other people milked cows. It took a lot longer for me to get the job done. We had one cow named Dolly. I always remember that she had a terrible habit. You would milk her and get a whole bucketful of milk. And just as you were getting through, she would take one foot, put it in the bucket—manure and all. And so we finally had to put a leather strap around her leg and a big metal loop so we could snap it to a post so she couldn't get that leg up."

Nowadays it's novel to hear of people getting milk products from any place other than a grocery store. But locally produced milk is gaining popularity again, especially among a growing number of raw milk advocates who want to keep in their diet the beneficial bacteria and enzymes affected by the pasteurization process.

Milking a cow in the late 1930s.

Listen to Judge Onion describe the adventures and responsibilities of owning milk cows, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Growing up on a Farm with Milk Cows
(03:28 )

Airdates: March 8, 9, 11

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Before television and computers monopolized our free time, chasing police calls was a popular hobby. People needed only a radio, the knowhow to tinker with it, and a car.

Charles Armstrong, a lifelong radio enthusiast and Waco resident, explains how he and wife Ruth had access to police dispatches through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s:

"They was on AM, but they were up high on the band. On your car radio or house radio, you could turn it far as you go plumb up to the end of the band. You could take you a screwdriver and go in the back, and you could change the frequency. You could raise it up a little bit by using what's called an antenna tuner, and you could reach the police department. You could hear them on there dispatching. So we could listen to them, and if it was anywhere close, we'd get in the car and go.

"And then it didn't last very long. I guess people got to bothering the police department and maybe too many people following them, so they went to FM, frequency modulation. I run up on a ad in one of the surplus books. We bought a tank receiver. It was for army tanks, twelve-volt operated. And so we'd chase them on FM."

Fires, car crashes, homicides—the Armstrongs went to it all. And their adventures influenced a young man named John Sherrell:

Charles Armstrong: "We'd chased so many times, so long that we knew every policeman on the force. In fact, the boy that used to ride with us to chase the calls, he said, ‘Boy,' said, ‘I'd like to be a policeman.' I said, ‘Well, they've got a school open down there.' And John went down and took a test and got in the police department, and he stayed on there for forty-something—forty years."

Ruth Armstrong: "And he's been on there for—he was on there for years."

Charles Armstrong: "And he ended up being a detective, and he got a taste of it from us."

When something interesting came over the police band, the Armstrongs often picked up nearby friends Harry and Lois Raines. Mr. Raines describes one disturbance that took place near the former post office at Franklin Avenue and Eighth Street: two soldiers were harassing a female and called in friends as backup when police arrived. Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Raines decided to help out:

"There were about two trucks sitting over by the post office there, and they whistled for them, and they all jumped out. So we was all out there fighting. And they'd tore up this policeman's uniform. And I was out there fighting; I was stomping his hat up. (laughs) And he had his gun out. He was hitting them up the side of the head with it. We loaded them in our car, took them to police headquarters, (interviewer laughs) the soldiers dressed in civilian clothes. This police had hit them up the side of the head, you know, and it didn't bring them down or nothing. Shoved them in a car, hit their head up against the side of the car, it didn't bother them. So they must have been hocked up on something, you know.

"And so they took them down there and drove in there. They'd reported we'd kidnapped those soldiers. These other guys in the truck, they went in the post office, called, said we'd kidnapped them. (laughs) And so we drove in down there, some policemen's standing out there, and they said, Is this the car kidnapped them soldiers? We said, No, we didn't kidnap them. We're bringing them in jail."

The first commercial police scanners hit the market in the 1970s, and today all kinds of scanning equipment exists, with many feeds streamed over the Internet. Several regulations of the practice have been put in place since the days when the Armstrongs and Raineses were listening in.

A 1957 Police Alarm PR-9, one of many forerunners to the modern-day police scanner.

Hear friends discuss their police-chasing days, in the segment that aired in KWBU-FM:

Chasing Police Calls
(03:40 )

Original Airdates: March 22, 23, 25 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Passenger rail travel in America enjoyed its heyday in the early 1900s, carrying at its peak in 1920 an estimated 1.2 billion
passengers that year. Trains made travel possible and relatively comfortable even in inclement weather, something no other method
of transportation could offer at the time. In 1911, Texas became the state with the most railroad mileage, a position it has not relinquished.

Mary Sendón of Waco recalls a train ride she took around 1908:

"When I was about seven, my father and my Grandmother Kemendo took me with them to Houston on a train. And that, to me, was the most wonderful experience I ever had in my life. My grandmother had relatives there. And I had never been anywhere on a train. I didn't know what a train was like even. And I remember my grandmother got train-sick. She was riding backwards; that's what did it. Well, there was a doctor on the train, and he said, ‘Well, just let her lie down on this—' It wasn't a divided seat; it was kind of a bench. And they let her lie down to rest, you know. So there was a man and a woman sitting just close by. Turned out to be a Jewish couple, the Herzes, H-e-r-z. They had a cigar store in Waco. And they asked me to come and sit with them, so I went and sat with them. And I always remember the first time I ever had a Nabisco—you know, they used to sell little Nabisco wafers in little tin boxes? Just real thin wafers. I remember that the boy that came—they called the butcher boy that would come through selling things on the train. They bought me a box of those, and that was the first time I had ever tasted them. But they were friends of my dad's because they had business close to his shop."

East Texas native Avery Downing, former Waco ISD superintendent, recalls a train adventure from the 1920s:

"I remember going to the Dallas fair on a special assembled there in Marshall–Longview. I had a little experience there one time. I had spent all my money except a quarter. And I saw that I had a few minutes left before I got on the train to go back, so I decided I'd buy me a couple of pounds of grapes. I ran back down to this little old stand that had the grapes, bought them. When I got back, the train was moving out, and I had to catch that thing on the run. I remember that. And I wonder till this good day—I considered myself a shy and timid fellow—I wonder what I would have done if I'd missed that train: no money and no acquaintances. I don't know." (interviewer laughs)

During its golden years, passenger trains seemed to be permanently ingrained in American culture, but they fell victim to the proliferation of cars, Interstate highways, and airlines as America prospered. By 1970 only the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific were still operating passenger rail service in Texas, and the following year remaining trains were turned over to Amtrak.

Passenger trains were once commonplace sights along the countryside and in cities large and small.

Listen to childhood Texas train memories in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Train Travel through Young Eyes
(03:20 )

Original Airdates: March 29, 30 and April 1 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Decades of friction between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, Serbia, came to a head in 1998-99 during the presidency of Slobodan Milošević. He and fellow Serbs felt Albanian nationalism was gaining too much of a foothold in Kosovo, an area long considered sacred by the Serbs. Serbs' use of excessive force and ethnic cleansing against Kosovar Albanians filled headlines worldwide, and NATO stepped in.

Back in Waco, Texas, Don and Helen McNeely, volunteer coordinators with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, watched events unfold on TV and wanted to help. They left for a survey trip, and Helen recalls entering Kosovo from Macedonia and traveling seven hours to the city of Gjakova:

"We waited at the border for hours to get across the border. There were UN [United Nations] trucks backed up with supplies for them.
And you don't stop along the way. You don't drink any water either because there's no bathroom along the way, and there's also landmines along the road. First thing we did when we drove in that city that had been bombed and looked like a war—it was a war zone. We saw a big sign that said, ‘Samaritan's Purse.' We pulled in there, dry as a bone. We went in, walked in. They said, You all want something to drink? And we said, Yes, and the bathroom. (laughter) We went, talked to them. They said, Well, come help us. Come work with us. So we sat down and designed a program to help rebuild houses before the winter snows came."

Don describes meeting local residents:

"Whenever we'd see a Kosovar Albanian who could speak English, they'd tell you their story. They needed to talk, and the stories were horrible. They tried to destroy their culture; they used rape as a major weapon to ruin the family and ruin everything. So these people were just full. And they said—we got tickled—they said, To us, Clinton is a god. (laughs) And by the way, they have a statue of Bill Clinton now in Pristina."

Interviewer: "Oh, really."

"Yes they do because he liberated them from horrible oppression."

Interviewer: (speaking at same time) "He saved them."

Helen shares more experiences from Kosovo:

"Don and I were walking down the street one day, and we saw two women—looked like a mother and a daughter. They were both crying. And so we walked up to them; they explained that their son had been taken away by the Serbs. They did not know; they were sure he was killed. Every Thursday the women would walk down the street with a picture of their loved one, either had been killed or missing. About twelve o'clock noon they would walk in a parade. There were mass graves; I have pictures of mass graves. You'd go along the hillside, and you'd see a mound, and you'd see some flowers there in plastic. There are other stories: one that, a man came in and said, ‘Sit down. I want to tell you my story.' And he started telling me about his father he hid between two walls and how he jumped in the river when he knew they were coming. He jumped in the river and went underwater so he couldn't be detected and nearly drowned."

Upon returning to the States, the McNeelys were able to find volunteers quickly, including a group from First Baptist Church–Waco. Over a period of ten weeks, volunteer teams traveled to Gjakova and Pristina to help rebuild.

Kosovar Albanian refugees in a transit border camp along the Macedonia-Kosovo border, 1999. (Photograph by Howard Davies)

Listen to Don & Helen McNeely discuss the horrors of the Kosovo Conflict in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

A Survey Trip to Kosovo
(03:46 )

Airdates: April 5, 6, 8

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

During WWII, hosts of teenage boys longed to join the fighting in Europe and the Pacific, among them Chester Rutigliano and four friends in Ridgway, Pennsylvania. In 1943, though still in high school, they decided to volunteer for military service.

The friends were dismayed to learn that one in their group, Jimmy, didn't have marks high enough in history to leave school for the war. Rutigliano recalls talking to their teacher about the matter:

"I said, ‘Aw, come on. Let him go. We're going to fight for our country and all that.' If I would've knew what the heck it was all about: (laughs knowingly) go and fight. So he said, ‘All right, I'll give him an oral test, and if he pass, he can go.' He said, ‘Jimmy, come on over here.' He said, ‘Jimmy, who crossed the Delaware River back in 1776?' ‘Oh! George Washington.' ‘Good, you pass. Get out of here.' (interviewer laughs)

With an OK from the school, Rutigliano told his father they were going to Erie for their physicals:

"'Look,' he said, ‘you can't go.' I said, ‘Why, Pop?' ‘Well, you're in a school. You go right down there to the draft board and tell them that you're in a school, you can't go.' I say, ‘Pop, you better sit down. I got some news for you.' So he sat down. He said, ‘What?' I said, ‘I volunteered for the service.' ‘Well, you stupid jackass!' He grabbed me and slapped me against the wall. I thought he was going to kill me. He said, ‘You don't know what this is.' Said, ‘I was in World War I in the Italian army, and I know what it's all about—the war. All right. Now when you go to Erie and take a physical, you make sure you get in the army. I don't want you in the air force and get killed up in the air. I don't want you in the navy, get drowned in the ocean. I want you in the army because if you get killed, we can pick you up.' I said, ‘Okay, Pop.'"

All five friends passed the physical. When it came time for assignments to military branches, Rutigliano wanted to fulfill his father's wish:

"And the guy gets up; he said, ‘All right, these are the guys that go to navy, and these are the guys go to army.' And who they call? ‘Chester Rutigliano, navy.' I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute! Wait a minute!' ‘Why?' I said, ‘I volunteered for the army. I want the army. I'm not going to go to navy.' He said, ‘Well, you qualify. We need you.' And there's one kid says, ‘Hey, how about he takes my spot, and I'll take his? I want to be in the navy, not in the army.' I said, ‘How about it?' He said, ‘Well, okay.' So we switch. (interviewer laughs) And that's how I got into the army."

After the war, Rutigliano returned to Ridgway with a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Good Conduct Medal, and a ranking as staff sergeant. He also brought home a question for his father:

"‘Now tell me, what did you really do when you was in Italian army?' He looked at me, started laughing. I said, ‘What are you laughing?' He said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but all right I'll tell you.' He said, ‘I was a cook. And I was way back. We cooked the food, and then they have guys take it up to the front line.' He said, ‘I never seen that—' ‘Yeah,' I said, ‘But the way you told me—' (laughter) He said, ‘I thought I'd tell you that, you'd be scared and one day you'd go to Erie for your physical, they might see that you're no good, they'll throw you out, see. I was hoping that they'd throw you out.' I said, ‘No, Pop. I turn out good; that's why I went in, see.'"

In 1965, Rutigliano and his family moved to Del Rio, where he worked for 18 years at Del Rio National Bank. Through the years, he kept up with his high school friends who volunteered with him during WWII, as well as those he fought with in the 87th Infantry Division, Company M.

A typical draft board during WWII, where collectively thousands volunteered for military service. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt)

Listen to a WWII veteran describe entering the military, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Leaving High School to Fight in WWII
(04:02 )

Original Airdates: April 12, 13, 15 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In September of 1936, much of Central Texas was enduring heavy rainstorms and flooding, with Waco especially hard-hit. Cresting at
41 feet, the Brazos River burst through a levee a mile above town, resulting in a torrent that put much of East Waco under water. Approximately two thousand residents were left homeless, and city manager W. C. Torrence ordered martial law in the flooded area.

Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, recalls
the floodwaters in Cameron Park:

"The flood was up to one of the shelter houses just below Proctor Springs, and that was as close as we could get to the playground because the water was up above our heads by the shelter house. And I can remember us kids going down there and taking our bathing suits and swimming out to this shelter house, then climbing up on top of it and diving off into the floodwaters, like crazy kids would do. But we were good swimmers back in those days."

Waco native Frank Curre Jr. shares his memories of the '36 flood:

"And they boxed off our brand new Washington Street Bridge because it had pillars under it and they thought it would wash them out. They opened the Suspension Bridge because it was suspended from one side to the other. You could travel on that. Barns would come floating down your river, and they'd crash into the bridge and be chickens in that old barn, be hogs coming down, horses, cows. A great big fat hog come out; we wrestled him down. We asked the sheriff's deputy or policeman or something, we said, What do you want us to do with him? Said, ‘Take him home if you want him.' Well, that night, Mama and my step-daddy was putting up sausage. (laughter)"

Curre, with Dorothy Head Powell, describes East Waco:

"Where Elm Street is and Dallas Street, we had a streetlight over there on Dallas and Elm. The bottom of that streetlight was dipping in the water. And you know the two-story red brick—"

Powell: "East Terrace."

"That water come up to that balcony on that two-story house."

Woodrow Carlile recalls how the flood affected Edgefield, the neighborhood where he grew up:

"The water got into the yard and perhaps two feet high in the yard. But I believe our house was constructed to where the water could get under the house. Maybe our floors were three feet off the ground. I don't ever recall water in the house."

He remembers an odd sight at Edgefield Baptist Church:

"Our piano in the basement of the church was floating around."

Carlile used to stake his family's dairy cows near the river, and he tells about rescuing one with water up to his waist:

"I recall walking Sarah down Bosque Street away from the river toward Fifth Street with my tennis shoes around her neck, and I was barefooted. I thought more of my tennis shoes than I did my feet, evidently."

In the 1930s, after decades of devastating floods throughout Texas, the U.S. government began authorizing the construction of dams along Texas rivers to control excess rainfall. This led to the Whitney Reservoir, which was completed in 1951 on the Brazos River and has prevented in Waco floods like the one in 1936.

The Whitney Reservoir, or Lake Whitney, on the Brazos River, built in response to devastating floods in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Hear Waco residents recall the flood of 1936, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

1936 Waco Flood
(03:40 )

Original Airdates: April 19, 20, 22 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Over the years, Central Texans have celebrated a variety of Easter customs.

Dr. Delta Hafford of De Leon managed the clothing program at the Methodist Children's Home in the 1950s and later served as school coordinator. She describes Easter at the Methodist Home in a 1977 interview:

"Easter Sunday was always such an exciting time because this was the time when every little girl had a new dress and a new pair of shoes, and they were so proud to wear them on Easter Sunday. This was probably the only day of the year that everybody had a brand-new dress on the very same day. Otherwise, the clothing was renewed, you know, at specific—at—on a staggered basis over the year. But on Easter Sunday, every little girl had a brand-new dress and a brand-new pair of shoes. And that was an exciting time. And it was really a time of pride, I think, for the children. This was also coincided with homecoming day. Homecoming, at the Methodist Home, has historically been on Easter Sunday. It's a time when everyone goes to church, and they like to look nice for the homecomers, you see, and for all the guests that were on campus. So it was doubly important for all the children to have something new to wear on Easter Sunday."

Dr. Adolph Basse of Fredericksburg explains an Easter tradition he took part in in the 1930s and 40s:

"Every Easter they'd build huge fires, and the idea was that the Easter Bunny was cooking eggs up there. And so that was a big, big thing. All the kids in all these little hills around here, everybody got a bunch together if we had—well, first we'd build them out of wood and later on out of old tires. And then they had a pageant with it, you know. And then they'd talk about these fires, and then they'd have the Indians and the whole works there. The legend goes it all got started because the Indians used to build fires on these hills, and the mothers would tell the kids, ‘That's—the Easter Bunny's up there; he's cooking eggs.' But it was actually the Indian fires."

Carol Durón grew up in Waco in the Calle Dos neighborhood. She shares memories of Easter week from the 1940s and 50s:

"You prepared yourselves. Since we went to a Catholic school, we went Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we didn't go Thursday, Friday. Thursday, my aunt would start with the cooking. We had capirotada. Oh, I remember my daddy—the trips to Safeway on Eighth and Washington. I mean, we—oh, we always ate so good. My aunt, I'd be watching her and helping her and, ‘Peel this. You're going to make the agua fresca.' And, mind you, all of this was done before going to church at two o'clock in the afternoon. Church was a walking distance, not far from us. And, of course, come back home, and we always enjoyed the food."

Clothing, bunnies, eggs, special recipes, church services—they share the thread that runs through all Easter traditions: spring as a time of natural and spiritual renewal.

Dr. Basse recalls an annual tradition from his childhood involving the Easter bunny.

Tune In

Hear a trio of Central Texans recall favorite Easter memories, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Easter Customs
(03:33 )

Original Airdates: April 26, 27, 29 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In the late 1800s, cotton was the driving force in Waco's economy, and the city wanted to implement a fall festival to celebrate the white substance. With a newly built exposition hall, Waco held its first Cotton Palace in 1894, and it was a great success. The building burned shortly after the month-long event but was rebuilt and opened again in 1910, and for two decades the Cotton Palace drew people from all over the state with sights and sounds galore.

Helen Geltemeyer, who grew up in the Bell's Hill area, describes the festival in the 1920s:

"And they had horse races at the Cotton Palace. Then right in the middle was the football field. Then they had all these other barns, like [Helmut] Quiram. Mr. Quiram there on Burnett had all these horses for you to go ride them. They had motorcycle races there; just everything they could try to do. Mr. [Benjamin W.] Cheaves, C-h-e-a-v-e-s, was the manager of the Cotton Palace. The main thing is—where we had fun—is going in the display of all the women putting their clothes and their canning in the woman's building. It was wonderful and—because they had these big, glassed-in things where you couldn't touch it."

She recalls how the festival involved local schoolchildren:

"Because every little school would be in the Cotton Palace. At the end, we'd have all these little dances up in that coliseum. See, that coliseum wasn't little; it was big. And that—the stage part—they left the stage there for years and then put the swimming pool there. But it was such a big thing. And I remember being in little dances, our school represented."

Geltemeyer describes one year she and her sister attended:

I'll never forget: some men came—Masonic men came to our house. They were visiting. And my sister and I were begging Mama to give us some money so we could go to the Cotton Palace. And these men gave us a quarter apiece, I think it was. But when we got down there at Fifteenth and Ross where—that was one of the gates close to our house—instead of on Flint and Cleveland, it was Ross. We would go through this gate to go to school and everything else. They took my quarter—our quarters to get in, and then we didn't even have any money to ride anything. We were so defeated because we didn't have enough money. (laughter)"

Martha Emmons came to Waco in 1914 to attend Baylor and recalls her experiences at the Cotton Palace in a 1978 interview:

"We used to come to ballgames and to other things out there, and I remember one time I was with a group that sang. Now laugh that off all you want to, but just the same I was. The streetcars would stack up at that end of the line. And the midway was the big show, you know, where you'd have, oh, the rides and all that sort of thing. And then the exhibits were in the exhibit hall. And the queen's ball was a big feature and beautiful, magnificent gowns."

The Cotton Palace held its last festival in 1930 because of the depression that was ravaging the country. But Waco residents breathed new life into the tradition in 1970, and the Cotton Palace continues today as a yearly stage production that tells the history of Waco.

A 1926 postcard featuring the Texas Cotton Palace in Waco.

Hear memories of the annual Waco festival once famous throughout Texas in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Cotton Palace
(03:40 )

Original Airdate: May 10 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

On May 11, 1953, at 4:36 p.m., a deadly F-5 tornado plowed into downtown Waco. Local radio stations immediately switched over to
24-hour emergency broadcasting, keeping citizens abreast of the latest developments.

Robert C. Martin was local news editor for KWTX in 1953 and tells
of his experience that Monday afternoon:

"I was on the telephone with the National Weather Service, and they told me that all danger of a tornado had passed. So I broadcast that, and I called the local police department, as I did every day just for daily update. And the call was misdirected to an upstairs office, and some young lady who was a secretary upstairs answered the phone. And she was screaming, and she said, ‘There are cars flying around the square!' And the tornado was passing over the city hall at that exact moment. So I picked up my little tape recorder, which had a wet-cell battery, unusual in those days, and I took that little recorder to the scene downtown and recorded what I was seeing. And I'm talking to people as they're throwing bricks out. And I say, ‘What is your name?' And they would tell me. ‘What are you doing?' ‘We're trying to uncover this person down below. He's trapped below.'"

Martin further describes his broadcasts:

"When there would be a fatality, the ambulance driver told me, ‘I'll play my siren so you'll know we're taking a dead person.' And so I would report, ‘Well, here goes another.' And I would have a—kind of a running account as to how many people had been taken out. The mayor and the people in authority, I would get their comments, which were very valuable because it gave the people at home a sense that somebody's in charge, and they're going to do what is necessary to get us out of this. And it—it kind of brought the community together."

M. N. "Buddy" Bostick, founder and longtime manager of KWTX, recalls an innovative broadcast he carried out:

"Our chief engineer contacted the Waco airport tower and entered into an agreement with them that we could go fly around Waco and describe the tornado damage. I was a pilot, and when you're a pilot, you think in terms of what you can do as a pilot."

WACO announcer Goodson McKee remembers the last person to be rescued from the tornado wreckage:

"Miss Matkin was the telephone operator at the R. T. Dennis [& Co.] furniture store. They worked and extricated her from the rubble of the building early the next morning. She was hospitalized at Hillcrest [Memorial] Hospital, and I took a tape recorder out there and did an interview with Miss Matkin who had survived the big crash of the furniture store."

LIFE magazine also featured Lillie Matkin in an article later that month about the storm. The tornado of 1953 took 114 lives, injured nearly 600, and changed the look and feel of downtown Waco forever. But, with the help of local radio broadcasters, Waco emerged from the crisis a tighter-knit community.

R. T. Dennis Furniture Store and Joy Theatre in downtown Waco after the 1953 tornado. (Photo courtesy of The Waco Tribune-Herald)

Hear former radio broadcasters share experiences of one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Radio and the 1953 Waco Tornado
(03:38 )

Original Airdate: May 17 (2010)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

In the early to mid-1900s in Waco, circuses were the stuff of children's dreams and stirred excitement from the moment they rolled into town.

Charles Armstrong recalls circus members on Seventeenth Street, when they were performing on the Cotton Palace grounds:

"By the corner, they had a fireplug right behind where Safeway store is right now—old Safeway store. And had a fireplug, and they'd water the elephants and water the animals and carry the water to the circus ground[s] from there. And we could see all from our house."

Helen Geltemeyer remembers thinking about the Big Top while a student at Bell's Hill School:

"I always wanted to go to the circus when [it] came to town. Never did. But we had a lot of trees along on Cleveland [Avenue] side there where we could sit. They had little benches around the tree. And I decided I'd show them how the clowns would jump off of this bench. Brother, I felt like my arm went through my body, and they had to take me into the—the cafeteria and put ice on it. But I—I really did think I was smart."

Wilbert Hutchinson grew up on First Street and tells about his front-row seat to the circus:

"We lived right in front of the railroad, and I remember passenger trains coming. Like I say, we stayed in this big old house, and it had what they call banisters around there, and we would climb up on them. And we would holler and wave at these peoples when we hear. And when a circus came to town, they done all their unloading right in front of us house. And we got to see all the animal[s]. Even if we didn't make it to the circus and my dad didn't have no money to go, we got to watch all the animals. We come out and we stand there on the porch, and we watch all the unloading taking place."

Circuses could not sneak into town, not that they wanted to, as Thomas Wayne Harvey describes:

"I can remember the steam engine trains coming in here with boxcars, fifty and sixty long, in behind two different trains. And they'd set them off on the sidings down there, and they'd take the elephants to pull the wagons that had the lions and the tigers and all the other various animals. And the deals had iron wheels with rubber on it—not tires but hard rubber on it. It was odd to see the animals walk, pull, and do all these things that was done, and the calliope would go down the street whistling its tune, you know.

"They'd go down Eleventh. At that time, Eleventh Street went all the way through—it was no I-35—and it went all the way through to La Salle. They'd go out there to Eleventh Street, in between Eleventh and Fifteenth on La Salle on the far side of the street. They'd set up camp over there on about—oh, about fifty or seventy-five acres over there. I've seen the circuses come in here, and I'd be down at midnight when they'd start unloading and watch them until—you know, you just fall asleep watching them."

Since the early 1900s, circuses worldwide have struggled to stand out amid other entertainment options—namely movies, radio, and television. And in more recent years, animal rights activists have challenged the treatment of animals in circus exhibitions. But the circus has survived and continues as a memorable childhood experience.

A circus worker unloads an elephant for an upcoming performance.

Listen to memories of the circus in Waco, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

The Circus
(03:33 )

Airdate: May 31

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Graduating from a school and starting a new chapter in life at another campus can be a bittersweet moment.

Charles Armstrong remembers his last days at Bell's Hill
Elementary School in Waco:

"They asked everybody that wanted to, to write a little something about the school, what they—what they learned or didn't learn. So I wrote a little poem, entitled ‘Good-bye, Bell's Hill.' Said:

Good-bye, Bell's Hill, good-bye.
I'm leaving you now, but I won't forget,
The time I've spent with you.
The boys and girls and teachers great,
My memory will be with you.

I've journeyed with you for days and years,
And now we drift apart.
The pleasant memories of things gone by,
Is written in my heart.
Good-bye, Bell's Hill, good-bye."

Mrs. Armstrong: "It's darling."

Interviewer: "That's nice."

He recalls a time in 1941 when he and his wife Ruth, who also grew up in Bell's Hill, returned to the school:

"They'd vote up there at the school; they still do. And I was voting for the first time, and she was. I walked down the hall there. I was going there to pick her up and walked down the hall and looked on the bulletin board, and my poem was still up there—this one. It stayed up there at least seven years I know, maybe longer, but I remember seeing that/it stayed there(??)."

Mary Sendón describes the excitement and emotions of graduating from Waco High:

"From the time I was in grade school I knew I was going to go to Baylor when I finished high school. And my dad, he was going to make arrangements for me to go to Baylor in the fall. And that was all planned out. One thing that my graduation did—(laughs) we graduated in First Baptist Church. My entire family turned out, regardless of the fact that they were disappointed that I didn't quit school like they wanted me to. But the whole family, the great-uncles and the great-aunts. And I think deep down they had a little pride in the fact that I—that I did go ahead, you know. But I had—they had a whole section there in First Baptist Church, (laughs) and I remember them all sitting there. And—but it put a stop to all of that feeling of matchmaking, you know, that sort of thing: What you going to do now? What are you going to do? And nobody asked me that anymore.

"I had a feeling I had cut loose from something. I don't know. It was just a kind of a—not a disturbed feeling—but I was really sorry to leave Waco High in a way because the last two years of my Waco High were just—I loved every bit of it. And, of course, I knew I had something better to look forward to, according to my dad. (laughs) But it sort of meant the end of one section of my life. I said—that was 1919. It was like a decade of my life was—was out now. That was finished, like I closed the book on it."

Everyone deserves a school experience that makes it sad to leave, even with new adventures and people on the horizon.

The Waco High School Mrs. Sendón attended has recently been renovated and converted into lofts. (Photo by Fay Ratta)

Original Airdate: June 7 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In addition to offering spiritual guidance and support, churches
provide a social community, and this was especially true in the early part of the twentieth century.

Baylor history professor Tom Charlton, founder and long-time director of Baylor's Institute for Oral History, recalls attending First Baptist Church–Beaumont:

"It was such a large church there. There were—there were just numerous kids my age, male and female, and there were many,
many weekend programs developed and sponsored by that church. I also participated in a lot of church activities at the First Methodist Church that was just two or three blocks from the First Baptist Church, and there were a lot of Saturday night dances there and social activities for young people. And so I got to know a lot of the kids who—who went there. They weren't all Methodists, by any means."

He mentions a favorite activity:

"I was a softball player and played in church leagues all the time, every year."

Woodrow Carlile was reared in Edgefield Baptist Church in Waco, where he also participated in church softball leagues. He talks about the games in a 1995 interview:

"The thing about it, even our pastors played. And there's some pretty potent, well-known pastors of today who in their younger years were pretty competitive on the softball diamonds."

Cathryn Carlile describes events at the Episcopal and Baptist churches in the Edgefield neighborhood:

"We had Camp Fire activities. We went to Bible schools at both churches in the summer. That gave you a month's entertainment with woodworking and all of the other things related to Bible schools. I remember the intermediate years. We had parties on Friday night where we played games. We had—were led in the right direction. (laughs) We stayed out of trouble."

The Carliles name another social activity at the Baptist church:

C. Carlile: "I think it was every Tuesday night they had a—it was called the Mother's Club, and this was a time for the women to come for social gatherings. And they did handwork; they probably quilted, did embroidery work. It was just a time to visit. The women looked forward [to] every Tuesday night—their night out."

W. Carlile: "That was my mother's big night."

Helen Geltemeyer remembers the Clay Avenue Methodist Church of her youth:

"And then Mrs. [Gladys] Johnson, whose husband [Floyd E. Johnson] was sent there to be a preacher, she would have some of the prettiest parties for us. Always had dessert of some cute thing, and we just thought that was wonderful. And we played volleyball. We—right there behind the church there. We had a good court. And we really did a lot of singing—singing, singing, and sing songs. And my mama always had big groups of women who were always having luncheons."

Today, the social aspect of churches remains as important as ever, as churches strive to find ways to adapt to the changing culture and reach out to the community.

Softball leagues were one of many social activities that churches offered in the early-to-mid 1900s.

Hear about favorite church activities in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Social Aspect of Churches
(03:26 )

Original Airdate: June 21 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Formed separately in the mid-1800s, the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association have since collectively been at the forefront of most major social movements, such as women's, civil, and human rights. The YMCA and YWCA are more commonly associated with promoting physical activity and education and offering safe lodging.

Gladys Casimir describes her mother's involvement with the Waco YWCA prior to Prohibition:

"When they went to their meetings they wore little white ribbon bows or rosettes, whatever you want to call it, on their left shoulders. They marched. The women were very active in trying to promote the abolition of liquor. City of Waco had a lot of saloons before they had to close down."

Tom Charlton, former director of the Baylor Institute for Oral History, recalls the Y in Beaumont in the 1940s and 50s:

"The YMCA played a—a big role in my life from the time I learned to swim at the YMCA when I was about nine. My mother and dad always made sure I had a membership at the downtown YMCA. And I would ride the bus from out Calder Avenue down to the YMCA, which was also on Calder near the downtown area. And so when I was in elementary school and early junior high school, I frequently was at the Y on weekends, whether it was Ping-Pong or playing tennis or swimming or basketball at the YMCA."

Dick Simpson, a YMCA leader and University of Texas student in the early 1960s, explains in a telephone interview how the Y took part in the Civil Rights Movement:

"The Y is the organization that housed the first planning meetings for the stand-in movement. And, in fact, at our first meeting at the Y, we were bombed, but the pipe bomb was ineffective. It just blew out a few bricks. The stand-in movement was an attempt to integrate the theaters that were on the street directly across from campus. We would form a line as if we were buying tickets, and let's say I was going as a white, and I would have an African American next to me. We would go up to the window, and I would say, 'I'd like to buy two tickets for this event,' or whatever. After a while, it—we didn't even get to quite that stage, but it looked like a line of theater-goers. But essentially it discouraged people from going to the theater because it was a protest in front of the theater.

"But the pattern was somewhat different than when you sit-in in a restaurant, but the principle was the same as the sit-in movement. It was to simply cut off enough business by making it known that the theaters were segregated, that there were protestors against it. As we cut the attendance, we obviously cut into their profits, which was the economic lever used in the Civil Rights Movement."

In response to a changing society, the YMCA of the USA began reappraising its role in the 1980s and decided to shift its focus to families, while the YWCA continues to promote empowerment for women. In keeping with tradition, both organizations continue to push for social justice and better communities.

A YMCA basketball team, circa 1950.

Hear about a few of the many capacities of the YMCA and YWCA in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

YMCA and YWCA
(03:40 )

Original Airdate: June 21 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

When the Great War came to an end in late 1918, a cloud hung over the jubilation; the world was suffering the worst pandemic in history. From 1918 to 1919, the Spanish Flu killed more people than the fighting did in World War I and infected more than a quarter of all Americans.

Educator Wilma Buntin describes the flu striking her family in the Houston area:

"And I remember my older brother Louis was the only one who didn't get sick. So he'd try to fix something for us for breakfast, or he'd tried to fix something for supper. None of us were interested whatsoever. They didn't have a doctor there, so you just had to do what you thought you could. And they knew to drink fruit juices and rest. Then he'd cry when he'd fix something. He said, ‘It's because I can't do a good job of cooking you all are not eating.' And he didn't—(laughter)."

In a 1987 interview, Louie Mayberry recalls how the virus changed everyday life for children:

"When we moved to San Antonio I started to school. I hadn't gone to school but a few days, they had a—a flu epidemic in San Antonio and they turned the schools out. And we stayed out for quite a while. And they was trying to teach me how to work. They let me shine shoes at the I&GN [International-Great Northern Railroad] station in those days; it's Missouri Pacific [Railroad] now. And then school started again, and it went on for a couple of weeks, and they turned out again. We didn't get much schooling before Christmas."

Bible translator Robert Bratcher, who was born in Brazil in 1920, tells how the illness affected travel:

"My parents and my older brother, who was at that time four years old, had gone to Brazil in 1919. They had been appointed by the Foreign Mission Board and were due to go in 1918, but the great flu epidemic was at that time, and it held them up. They stayed in Valhalla, New York, with some other missionaries waiting till the ships, you know, were available that had sailors that could man them to take them to Brazil."

Folklorist Martha Emmons remembers escaping the flu:

"I have often thought that the Lord in His providence kept me from having the flu. I used to give a more earthy explanation than that. People asked me how I avoided it because, oh, people just dropped dead all around from that. But I was so needed, I thought. See, I had my father with me, and I was teaching at Maypearl, Texas, and I remember when I was asked that I said, ‘Oh, well, all I can attribute it to is eating onions and staying happy.' (laughter) And I did eat onions and anything else that way that I thought was the right kind of thing. And I did make an effort to stay happy. But I've often just thought it must have been a providential stroke because I don't know what could have happened if I had had to have the flu right there with my father an invalid and with me, and we were in that little apartment there. And it would have been awful for him to have taken the flu from me, don't you see?"

The nationalism and acceptance of government authority heightened by the war allowed public health workers to easily put in place restrictive measures to bring the epidemic under control. The Spanish flu outbreak then faded from public memory, until flu scares in recent decades.

Spanish Flu victims lined up on cots to receive medical treatment.

Listen to stories of the worst flu pandemic in history, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
(03:42 )

Original Airdate: July 19 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

The planning and packing for a family vacation are worth it, as the trip allows family members to create lasting memories and form closer bonds.

Retired Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionary Jane Martin describes the getaways her family enjoyed while living in East Africa:

"We would pack up our gear: one tent, one large tent, cots and sleeping bags and the whole bit and a stove and dishes and—you name it, we were taking it. Everything but the kitchen sink, and even that was a basin we did take. (laughter) And we were able to tent back under the trees behind an old English hotel—not a fancy hotel, a family-oriented. And we would be by the Indian Ocean. And just beautiful, beautiful setting. And this was true togetherness when you get six people in a tent, sleeping. (laughter) And then, of course, so much wonderful outdoor life. The beauty of that area just overwhelmed us each time we would go in. We usually camped for ten days each time and picked the time. And very rarely did we have rain. We just had beautiful weather. And that was a real together time."

Goodson McKee, former announcer for WACO, recalls a trip that didn't go quite as planned:

"We're driving down the south entrance to Yellowstone Park, and the car catches on fire. So I jump out of the car and got Pat and Debbie, our daughter, little kid, and we jump out of the car and the car burns up. We've got the whole traffic stopped, north and south—north entrance, south entrance all shut down because of the fire. And here's Yellowstone central fire station out there (laughter) trying to put the fire out. But anyway, it burned up all our clothes except what we had on. So that was an experience."

Martha Howe of Waco remembers road trips with her father, Walter Lacy Jr., president of Citizens National Bank:

"Daddy would take all four of us—that was before David was born—on these car trips. And they were long, and we kind of liked them. I mean, I hate to tell you. But we saw a lot, and we went a lot of really nice places and went to every state in the Union, believe it or not. I mean, when we would take out in the Oldsmobile, (laughter) we would drive and drive and drive thousands of miles. And we'd stop about every three or four hundred miles, depending on how much the four kids could take. (laughter) And Mother would read to us. And we went a lot of places. But I'm telling you all this to tell you that we would stop in these little cities so that Dad could see the urban renewal and so he could see—they—he had read that they have a new motor bank at this—in this town. And he really researched all this."

As long as families exist, so will the tradition of family members setting out on adventures to experience together and reminisce over in years to come.

A family prepares to hit the road. (Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Hear stories of family trips - the good and the bad - in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Family Vacations
(03:40 )

Original Airdate: July 26 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Home remedies have been around for thousands of years, passed down from one generation to the next and utilizing common products to treat illnesses. In early 1900s Waco, these treatments abounded.

Mary Sendón recalls home remedies her family used:

"They would use coal oil and rock candy. It was supposed to be for coughs and chest colds. Then they used mustard plasters for chest pains and pneumonia. My—that's what they used on my grandfather in pneumonia. And this is a funny story about that: my grandfather really was a—they thought he was dying. He was having what they call sinking spells; you know, he'd just get so weak. It was during the Prohibition days, and the doctor could order whiskey from a drugstore with a prescription. Well, the doctor ordered a bottle of whiskey from Old Corner Drug Store.

"And he told my—all of my aunts—everybody came together to help—and he said, ‘Get him an eggnog every thirty minutes.' And he told them how to do it: put a tablespoon of whiskey in a glass and fill it with egg beaten up real stiff. Said, ‘Every thirty minutes, see that he gets one.' Well, he set out the whiskey. And, you know, all night long, they were beating eggs, and they beat them by hand; they didn't have any kind of eggbeaters. The next morning he was improving, and he recovered. The egg gave him strength, and the alcohol was accelerating the cure; it was accelerating the killing of the germ. That's the way he put it."

Sendón explains other treatments:

"They used turpentine. Turpentine was a good cure. I remember going after the milk one day for my neighbor's house, and I stepped on a nail. And, oh, everybody just got so excited because the nail was so dangerous. And that was a rusty nail. Well, they got coal oil and just poured it over my foot and kept pouring it over my foot. And that cured—that stopped the infection. Coal oil."

Woodrow Carlile tells how he nursed his nemesis:

"My main problem was poison oak. Being light-skinned, my arms would get poison oak on them and crack open like a dry riverbed, just separate. And if we had calamine lotion we used that, but other than that, in the summer you just laid out on the ground and let the sun or whatever heal it."

Cathryn Carlile remembers a home remedy her family once performed on her:

"I went to the Waco-Temple high school football game, and it was so cold. And coming home, I could hardly breathe. When I got home, they put towels on my chest and ironed through the towels—the heat. As I remember, we were up practically all night. And early in the morning, my dad went to get the doctor. We didn't have a telephone. And he came and said that I had pneumonia but that all the heat that had been applied had broken it up and that I'd be fine."

Today, the rising cost of traditional health care and a growing interest in a more holistic approach to illness have boosted the popularity of home remedies. And the Internet has made them much easier to share.

Vintage bottle label

Hear Waco residents tell about medical treatments in the days of house calls, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Home Remedies
(03:40 )

Airdate: August 2

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In December of 1944, John F. Onion Jr. from San Antonio, a newly minted marine, set sail for Saipan. The journey had been delayed because of problems with the ship, and Onion recalls everything was still not fixed:

"And I think it was the second day that they announced that there would be no drinking water available at all hours, that the ship's equipment for turning saltwater into freshwater had broken down, or something was wrong with it so that if we wanted water to drink, we had to line up at eight o'clock in the morning, stand in line, and get hot water that came out. And then six o'clock in the evening, you need to get back in line."

Onion describes a welcome assignment during the voyage:

"One time they grabbed us and told us that they needed a cleanup detail to go back to officers' country. So we went back to officers' country. And we had a broom and a mop and pail and something else. Well, back there they had a cold-water fountain. So we'd work a little bit and go over and drink cold water. And finally they told us we were through."

The cold water was difficult to forget, as Onion explains:

"That evening, one of the guys who'd been with me on that detail said, ‘What are you thinking about?' And I looked at him, and I said, ‘Cold water.' (laughs) He said, ‘I am too.' He said, ‘Let's go back there and get some.' I said, ‘We can't do that. They've got guards on either side of the ship.' He said, ‘How did we get back there this morning?' I said, ‘We were on a detail.' He said, ‘I got a bucket, if you can get a—a mop.' So sure enough, he brought a—found a bucket, and I found a mop. We said, ‘Work detail,' and the guard stood aside and let us go back there. We tanked up with water, came back on the other side with our—

"The next day he said, ‘What are you thinking about?' And I said, ‘The same thing you are.' So we went and looked, and we couldn't find a mop, broom, bucket, or anything. So he said, ‘Let's go back anyway.' Well, the officers made a habit of coming out of officers' country, so to speak, in their skivvy shirts, and they didn't wear their insignias or anything. So, any rate, he said, ‘We can bluff our way through.' So we went up to this one guard, and this guard said, ‘Halt! Officers' country! You can't go back there!' And my friend turned around and said, ‘How long have you been on this ship? And when are you ever going to learn the officers on this ship?' ‘Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry, sir.' I mean turned around. The two of us went (laughs) back there, tanked up on water, came out on the other side. And I told him, ‘I don't think I ever want to do that again.' (laughs) And we didn't."

John Onion Jr. went on to serve at Saipan and Okinawa and took part in the U.S. occupation of Japan, before returning home to pursue his law studies. In 1989, he retired as presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after twenty-two years of service on the court.

American troops heading overseas in 1944.

Hear a WWII marine tell about shipping out, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

On a Slow Boat to Saipan
(03:44 )

Original Airdate: August 9 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

During the scorching months of a Texas summer, there's nothing quite so refreshing as playing in the water or at its edge.

Wilma Buntin of Houston lived for five years in Galveston as a child. She recalls a favorite summer activity:

"We would go to the beach, and we called it bathing. My aunt brought her bathing suit. It was one of those old-fashioned, looked like a—a short skirt and had white—three rows of white braid around the bottom. It came just below her knees. She had black stockings that went up above her knees, and bloomers were under there."

Interviewer: (laughing) "Doesn't sound real comfortable."

"She had bathing—no—she had bathing shoes on, and then she had a bathing cap, as it was called. It looked like a dust cap. And if she had fallen down in the water, we wouldn't have been able to save her. (laughter) But the ladies at that time didn't swim. They even had puff sleeves of all things, so that that would fill up with water too.

"But we'd go down, and—and we'd beachcomb. Early in the morning it's easy to find the shells, and you can even find the sand dollars that are not broken. And if you pick them up carefully, why, you can have the whole sand dollars. So we'd beachcomb awhile, and then we'd bathe awhile. And then the water made us so hungry till we couldn't wait to get home, get a bath, and my mother always had a good breakfast for us."

Martha Howe of Waco remembers her summers at Oak Point, or Lacy Point, on the old Lake Waco:

"Everybody loved sailing. My father went to Culver and was in the—in the naval school. And Papa bought the boys a sailboat. And then Papa also bought them a wooden Hacker-Craft speedboat. And so they water-skied. And then over on the town side—that would be the east side—Papa had put pea gravel out into the lake so that you wouldn't get that old squishy mud between your toes. (laughter) And I remember—I was in diapers, and we would—we would swim there. And it had big cottonwood trees all around it, so it was shady, and it was wonderful. It was kind of like a little beach, but it was with Lake Waco water. (laughter)

"And Daddy would teach—taught us how to swim there. We had piers out into the lake. We had a wonderful person that worked for us named Sherman. He would fish on one of the piers, so we called it Sherman's Pier. But we would swim from the pier. And we had a canoe, and we had a speedboat. And so, yeah, we—we definitely took advantage of it. But that was when the lake was small."

Texas offers 15 major rivers, more than 150 lakes, and a gulf coast to consider for summer activities. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Web site provides recreation suggestions and safety tips for these locations at tpwd.state.tx.us.

Wilma Buntin recalls beachcombing in Galveston in the early 1900s.

Listen to memories of frolicking in Texas waters, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Summer Water and Beach Activities
(03:26 )

Original Airdate: August 16 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Prohibition in the United States led to the decade most associated with flowing alcohol and crime. The Eighteenth Amendment, on the heels of the Volstead Act, put into place a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol in 1920. Local law enforcement agencies were not prepared.

Helen Geltemeyer of Waco recalls a relative concocting whiskey during Prohibition:

"But I have an aunt—his sister in Austin—made it. They made it in their bathtub. And the reason why they did there because if they found out the cops were coming, they'd just let it go down the drain."

Ann and William Walko of Windber, Pennsylvania, explain how Prohibition affected the moonshine trade:

A. Walko: "My grandmother, they said she was in jail almost every weekend. They take her to jail; my mother have to find somebody to go bail her out, you know. But that was survival. They had—they needed money, so they would make the moonshine. And these bachelors were all living with people. You know, they worked in the mine. And they would—she'd sell them bottles, you know, and they'd pick my grandmother up, and away she'd go (laughs) off to jail. But she wasn't the only one. There was a lot of women around this area."

W. Walko: "I remember my mom and that, they used to make—my grandma used to make that moonshine down in the cellar. And I notice they'd put it in a little spoon, and they'd light it, see if it'd burn. (laughs)"

A. Walko: "If it was strong enough."

Interviewer: "And you knew it was good."

W. Walko: "If strong enough."

A. Walko: "Yeah, you knew it was good then."

W. Walko: "I didn't know what they were doing then. But then, this one time when they heard the cops coming around, boy, they got rid of that, (laughter) stuffed in their cars and everything else."

Folklorist and educator Martha Emmons of Mansfield describes her and her father's impressions of Prohibition:

"I remember a lot of people that thought it was so cute to break the law. And I know my father used to say—now he was pretty well on the idea of strict construction of the constitution of states' rights. He was brought up in that, don't you see. And he used to be in favor of local option because he said he was in favor of prohibition on the state scale if anybody could enforce it, but he said, ‘You just watch it. It will not be enforced on a—the bigger your scale, the less the enforcement will be.' And he did think it was a degrading thing to have laws on the statute books that were not enforced and not obeyed. And now a lot of people said that when they say, I'm for local option, that that was just a cop-out, that we want statewide prohibition.

"But I know it was often discussed around that supper table at home, and I heard so much of my father's sentiments. Now, he wasn't above taking a drink. As I tell you, we grew up on whiskey. And the doctors told us, though, that in prohibition there would be something else. I used to think, What in the world will we do if we get sick? Because whiskey was available to everybody, and that was a common remedy that we all had."

Throughout the twenties, Prohibition grew steadily more unpopular, and enforcement proved impossible. In the spring of 1933, President Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, and in December Utah's ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment officially repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, bringing an end to Prohibition.

Protestors show their disapproval of Prohibition legislation.

Hear memories of the Prohibition era in the United States, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM: 
Prohibition
(03:36 )

Original Airdate: August 30 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Pests—the creepy-crawly, buzzing kinds—are a year-round nuisance in Waco but are especially present in summer months, when they come out in full force and bring misery along with them.

Louise Murphy describes her introduction to one such pest:

"I didn't know anything about roaches until we got an icebox. I got acquainted with Mr. Roach. And off and on all the years, we still have a problem with Mr. Roach because they can get in these cracks in the ground where there're shift[s] in there, and you cannot get rid of them."

Interviewer: "Well, what—what do you think it was about the icebox that—that—"

"Oh, they was full of them. They love that. It was the coolness. Besides that, they—they had moisture down in under there, and they clung to that. And I didn't know what they was until we got one, and I couldn't imagine what that was."

She recalls an experience with bedbugs in the 1950s:

"Boy, they get in your bed, they get in your walls, and they would get in the cracks of the—under the house, the cracks and what have you. And what they do: when you go to sleep—ooh, you couldn't sleep for them things sucking the blood out of you. So my dad says, ‘Ooh.' Said, ‘What have we got into?' I said, ‘Bedbugs.'"

Murphy explains that she and her father waged war on the unwanted guests by using DDT:

"I said, ‘Well, go to the feed store, and ask them if they got any.' I heard that would just get rid of everything, our roaches and everything—which he did and brought it in. And we made a solution, and I got a paintbrush. Now, I went around every window, I went around our mattresses on the beds, I went around the baseboards, and every room was painted just like I painted the door facings and all with paint. I don't believe I had to do it twice, just once, and I got rid of them. Boy, I want you to know, I kept that stuff as long as I could because I didn't want it anymore, you know. But you—the roaches will come back."

Thomas Wayne Harvey tells how his family dealt with mosquitoes:

"Every once in a while they would—they would get bad, but we'd burn cork, like a cork in a—a fishing cork. Same kind of—you could burn that just—it'll burn slow, you know, and it—that thing'll burn for hours. And you could sit out there, and it would—some reason they'd stay away from that cork."

Charles Armstrong recalls a pest that took advantage of the open windows during the summer months:

"Flies was a nuisance. And my family would—would give me so much for flies, for killing flies, see. And I—I went around the house all the time with two flyswatters and save them flies; put them in a jar and save them, see. And they'd pay you so much for them—them flies. My brothers, they were pretty strict on me. If they caught me cheating, they'd get after me, see."

Insect pests are unfortunately a part of life and annoyingly resilient. It's easy to understand how the urban legend began that says cockroaches are the only things that will survive a nuclear holocaust.

Before it was banned, DDT was a common ingredient in household insecticides.

Hear Wacoans relate stories of fighting bugs in the good ol' summertime, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Insect Pests
(03:36 )

Airdate: September 6

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

In the early 1960s, many Southerners fed up with racial discrimination were participating in restaurant sit-ins, hoping to change the status quo.

Robert Cogswell of Austin, a social justice activist, recalls taking part in the movement in Houston:

"It was customary for black people who were demonstrating to have a token white among them to show that they weren't exclusivists. And I was often the token white. My activism had to do with a small group of youth in the NAACP who challenged the idea that Houston restaurants were already integrated. We spent our Saturdays driving around to restaurants and walking in and sitting down and not being served. We received a lot of responses that bordered on the absurd. A waitress would ignore us for a long time and then come to our table. In one case, the waitress said to me, "Are your friends Africans?" And it developed that if they were Africans, she was willing to serve them, but if they were American blacks, she was not.

"In another case, I went into a restaurant with a young man who was a—in a pre-medical program in the University of Houston. He was well-dressed and clean-cut-looking young man. And we sat down at a table, and there was a booth near us which contained a drunk old man who was abusing the waitress verbally, using language that neither I nor my friend would ever use, telling her in no uncertain terms that he would like to be having sex with her. And the waitress was polite to him and served him politely and refused to serve us because my friend was black."

Arthur Fred Joe was a spearhead in the integration of Waco restaurants. He explains an early sit-in on the Old Dallas Highway:

"So I sat there for three hours in this restaurant and refused. But they didn't have the volume of trade that I thought that we could march in and sit in to hurt their business. See, my angle was to hurt you in your pocketbook, and this is what the program was all about. If you couldn't hurt them in their pocketbooks, you wasn't doing no good, not far as the civil rights concerned."

Joe describes his first victorious sit-in at a restaurant on Austin Avenue, where he went during his break from work:

"Something said, ‘Don't you go home this morning for breakfast; go there.' I just drove my car up there and parked and got out and went in there. I sat there, and they kept walking by me, these little waitresses. So I took a newspaper in with me. And all—this the way we—I started my movement: you always have something to read so it wouldn't just—you just wouldn't look stupid."

Restaurant sit-ins such as these were instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended legally-sanctioned racial segregation in the United States.

African American customers wait for service in a Nashville sit-in.

Listen to two nonviolent protesters discuss their participation in restaurant sit-ins, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Restaurant Sit-ins
(03:28 )

Original Airdate: September 20 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

In the early 1900s, Texas enjoyed nearly 500 miles of electric interurban railways. The bulk of the mileage, about 70 percent, was in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A line to Waco opened in 1913. Interurbans provided frequent passenger service between urban centers, setting them apart from what existing steam railway systems offered.

Interurban lines were highly sought after, as Martha Howe recalls:

"My great-grandfather, W. D. Lacy, started the—was instrumental in starting the interurban railroad that came to Waco. It was going to go in another direction, but he was very instrumental in getting it to come here."

Howe remembers traveling on the interurban with her sister:

"When Florence and I were little girls—and I'm thinking eight and ten or maybe a little bit older—Mother would take us down to the train station here in Waco and put us on the interurban and pay the conductor five dollars and say, ‘You watch these little girls.' We had matching suitcases, and we wore little hats. (laughter) And, 'You watch these girls, and when it—when the train gets to the big Union Station in downtown Dallas, make sure they do not get off. Let them stay on the train till you get to Highland Park station, and their grandparents will be right there waiting for them.' So. And we would go and spend like ten days to two weeks in the summer."

Mary Sendón explains how important the interurban was to the annual Cotton Palace:

"We had lots of visitors to Waco. Fort Worth had a day; Dallas had a day. But we had an interurban, an electric train, that ran from Waco to Dallas and Fort Worth. And you could go for a dollar and a half a round trip (laughs) on the interurban. And a lot of that—all of those people would come in on that interurban. It was stationed—the headquarters were stationed on Fourth and Washington. And that old interurban would come in loaded with people, you know, and then—because they ran on the hour. Every hour there was one leaving, so they could go back home at night. But I remember the Fort Worth and Dallas days were—oh, those were big crowds then. Had huge crowds. Clay Street—I know—you know where Clay Street is. That is such a quiet street now, (laughs) but you just couldn't go down Clay Street during the Cotton Palace; people were coming and going and coming and going."

As highways improved and private car ownership escalated, electric interurban railways faded. By 1942, only two lines remained in Texas, which included the Dallas-Waco branch, but these finally succumbed in 1948, bringing an end to the interurban era.

Vintage postcard depicting the Interurban Bridge in Waco, Texas.

Listen to stories of the Waco interurban, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Electric Interurban Railways
(03:08 )

Airdate: September 27

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Texans living near the Gulf Coast often cast a nervous eye on the weather during hurricane season, aware of past devastating storms.

In a 1979 interview, Frank Booker of Independence recalls the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 as his family experienced it in the Angleton area. On the day the storm hit, Booker's father had gone to town:

"He was up there getting some hands to pick cotton. And while he was there, the news come over that the storm wind was blowing forty miles an hour in Galveston. And he come back, and he began to pick up what cotton pickers had picked that day. After the storm, just wasn't nothing there. The bolls and all were stripped. The wind had blew it all off."

Booker remembers weathering the storm in the family home:

"It was just like a horseshoe and you open it/in your opening(??). The rest of it was timber. We had some cotton pickers out there, and the weather—the wind was blowing; the windows were coming out of the house. And Daddy called them in, said, ‘Y'all come in here.' So they come in there and spent the night in the house with us. It was a two-story house. And before—my daddy said if it hadn't been for that timber, that house would been blown all to pieces. And I remember that house rocking. That's one of the things I remember. Part of the blocks—there's wooden blocks—had floated out on one side. And then the wind would carry it and then it lull and it come back, just bump. Then it would blow it over again. But it stood the storm."

Interviewer: "So it was able to give some."

"Yeah. And houses at Angleton blew away for five miles."

Robert C. Martin was manager of Radio Station KNAL in Victoria in 1961, a year another powerful hurricane hit the Texas coast. He explains how one of his announcers, Charlie Lewis, handled the storm:

"When [Hurricane] Carla came through—a big storm. It hit Victoria directly, Port Lavaca. And so we were, of course, covering that as best we could. And Charlie, he called and said, ‘I can take it awhile out here if you people want to rest awhile.' And I said, ‘That's a good idea, Charlie.' So we threw the broadcast feed out to Charlie with his remote studio. And during that time, a little old lady called me. She was frightened to death—at the height of the storm. Things are—roofs flying off. It was bad. She said, ‘Mr. Martin, I think it would be good if you all played a hymn.' And I said, ‘That's a good idea. I'll call Charlie, see if he can handle it.' So I did, and Charlie said, ‘I'll take care of it.' The song he played was ‘I'll Fly Away.' (laughter) That's the kind of character he was. He took the serious things lightly and the light things seriously."

According to the Hurricane Severity Index, Carla is the most intense land-falling Atlantic hurricane in the U.S. But fortunately, hurricane monitoring and warning measures had greatly advanced since the Galveston Hurricane, allowing residents to prepare.

A family along the Texas Coast surveys the floodwaters from Hurricane Carla, which made landfall on September 11, 1961.

Hear Texas natives recall two major storms to hit the state's coast, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and Hurricane Carla
(03:33 )

Airdate: October 4

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Junior high and middle school are not days that most people would want to relive. But awkward though they may be, these years influence the rest of our lives and hopefully provide some cherished memories.

Woodrow Carlile of Waco reflects on his days at South Junior High School:

"I'm left-handed, and I went in this class and I went to the blackboard and started writing with my left hand on the board. My teacher hit me a lick across the shoulder or something and said, ‘Quit playing around. Write with your right hand.' And, you know, to this day, I can't write on a blackboard with my left hand. I—(laughter) I guess I may have explained to her."

Carlile's wife: "So I guess some of that—"

"But I appreciated that teacher. She was—she had her problems. (laughter) But she was a good—and I especially enjoyed the woodworking and the metalworking shops and the harmonica clubs and the gym classes. And I may have related that the brother who is next to me, older, won the history medal. When he went up on the stage, they requested that he wear shoes if possible. (laughs)"

Hewitt Mayor Pro-Tem Charlie Turner recalls an early experience that helped shape his outlook on life:

"When you're 5' 5" and weigh 108 pounds, football—you're closer to the weight of the football than you are the other players. And the old story goes, you know, the first time I suited out for football, they snapped the ball—they had a guy against me; Kelly Smith(??) was his name, I believe. It was at West Junior High School. And when they hiked the ball, I took the ball. Coach had said, ‘Hit him hard as you can.' I did, and I'm exaggerating a little bit but not much. When I woke up, probably an hour later, I realized I was a lover, not a fighter, and so I joined the band, and I played drums ever since."

Dr. Clifford Madsen, respected music scholar and educator at Florida State University, describes the impact of early mentors in Price, Utah:

"In junior high school, I was kind of adopted by a couple of people in the community by the name of Brown, Dorothy Brown and her husband. They were both music teachers. Dorothy was kind of the mainstay of the community. She used to be the person that would get the Messiah together every Christmas—or parts of it. And I—I can't remember—Deene Brown was his name, and he was the junior high school vocal person. So when I got into junior high school and playing in the band, he wanted me in the chorus, too. And he was the one that first started teaching me about theory. I can remember going to his house one time and his teaching me "this is dominant, this is super dominant," you know, those kinds of things. And I thought, Goodness, you know. This sounds strange and funny, and why do they have all those names? And I guess he was thinking also that somewhere along the way I'd be a musician or whatever. And those kinds of experiences, of course, are very nurturing musically for young people."

Junior high and middle school experiences leave lasting impressions. As adulthood inches ever closer, young teens are looking for answers to who they are and what that means in the big picture.

A 1960s football game.

Hear formative memories from the junior high years, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Junior High
(03:42 )

Original Airdate: October 25 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In 1930, Judge John F. Onion Jr. and his family moved into the old Huebner house near San Antonio. They soon became aware of strange noises occurring at all hours. Joseph Huebner, an Austrian jeweler and blacksmith, had built the first floor of the house in 1862. Around 1882, the year he died—some say he mistook kerosene for whiskey—a second floor was added.

Onion describes one set of peculiar sounds in the house:

"You would hear a click, like somebody had stepped on the bottom step of the staircase or stairwell. And then it would automatically come up. It wouldn't be a click here and then a click over here, a click by—it was kind of like somebody was trying to slip up the stairs, you know. And many a time I—when I was sick in bed, I had my eyes glued on the door to see who might walk in. And I never told anybody because I didn't want anybody [to] think I was superstitious or heard ghosts or anything. Then I found out that a good many of the other members of the family had had the same experience."

He recalls a bizarre episode involving a household appliance:

"And I remember my mother had an iron that was a iron you sat down at. It wasn't a hand iron; it was a big machine iron that you could roll something. And then you had a little click on the side—you pushed your leg against it—and the iron would come down, and you'd roll this big roller under the iron and iron something. You push the click, and the iron would raise up, and then you could readjust it. Well, it made such a distinctive noise.

"And I always remembered one morning—I guess I was thirteen or fourteen—my dad was going to work. And when he left, car tires on the gravel woke me up, and we were sleeping out on the upstairs porch because we didn't have air-conditioning in those days; was much cooler. And that machine was in one of the inner bedrooms, and I heard it running. And I heard the click. Heard the iron come down; I heard the click. And I thought, well, my mother was ironing something. So I lay there, and my brother was in a different bed; he was sound asleep. And so finally I got up, went into my bedroom off the porch, dressed, and went down to the kitchen. And when I opened the door to the kitchen, my mother turned around and said, ‘What were you ironing upstairs?' I said, ‘I wasn't ironing. You were.' She says, ‘No, I've been down here in the kitchen since your—before your dad left even.' It was so vivid to both of us at different locations. We both went together back up to where the iron was, and it was just as cold as it could be. My brother was still asleep on the porch. So I said, ‘I'll never explain that one.'"

In recent years, preservationists fought plans to demolish or move the Huebner-Onion Home. Today, the Huebner-Onion Homestead and Stagecoach Stop has a Texas Historical Marker and features nature trails and Joseph Huebner's gravesite. The Leon Valley Historical Commission is in the process of restoring the house and surrounding structures and plans to turn the location into a history museum and learning center.

Due to safety concerns, the Leon Valley Historical Commission removed the original two-story front porch from the Huebner-Onion Home.

Hear tales of a Texas ghost, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

The Haunted Huebner-Onion House
(03:42 )

Original Airdate: November 1 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Each autumn in the early part of the twentieth century, many southerners made time for a hog-killing. The slaughter offered a change in diet but more importantly yielded enough food to help families get through the winter.

Longtime Waco resident Louise Murphy recalls that hog-killing was a family affair, with even children given responsibilities:

"They give me the intestines. I had to go get me some water, put them intestines in a pan of water. Then I had to get me a—a jar of something, get water in, hold his intestine up, and pour till it was clean on the inside. Then I put him on the table, and I would scrape him. I'd scrape him. I'd get a hairpin and put over, and I'd bring all that stuff out until you could see through that intestine just as clear as it could be. And that's what we stuffed our sausage in."

Murphy describes a few hog delicacies:

"The brains. I had a brother-in-law that had to have them brains and scrambled eggs. And my dad would save the liver and the lights. And my mother would go in and put her big pan on. And she put liver and lights, cook them together."

"Lights" refers to the lungs of the hog. Thomas Wayne Harvey of Waco remembers how his father handled the meat:

"Dad would hang the hog up, and he would quarter it out. And he had a wooden fifty-five-gallon barrel there, and it was—about four inches in the bottom was full of salt. And then he'd put a slab of bacon and then cover that with salt and then another slab of bacon and cover that with salt. And it was always all salt, pork and salt, hog all the way up to the top. And then his hams, they put all kind of seasoning on the hams they got over there. And he had a brand new tow sack bag. And they put that ham in there, and they hung it up. He'd go out there and tend to that ham. And by the time Christmas got there, you could take a ham and cut the tow sack off, and you could eat the ham raw because it was cured. It was really definely or divinely(??) cured."

The attitude in a hog-killing was waste not, want not, as Harvey explains:

"Most of the hide they made pork rinds out of—hog hides, nowadays you call them, but back then you call them cracklings. And then, of course, they used the meat out of the head for mincemeat. Even the—the feet was put in a solution, and the hooves was taken off of them, the hide was taken off of them for pig's feet, and they'd pickle pig's feet. About the only thing was left of the hog that was never (laughs) cured or treated was the tail, as far as I know."

Hog-killings as performed in the early 1900s have largely disappeared over the years. But some enthusiasts of homegrown, old-fashioned hog products still carry out the tradition.

Neighbors work with various parts of a slaughtered hog spread out on a table.

Hear Wacoans discuss the dishes garnered from a hog-killing, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Food Products from a Hog-killing
(03:22 )

Airdate: November 8

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the first use of a nuclear weapon in war. Two days later the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded the next day, August 9, the same day the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Collectively, these events brought an end to WWII.

Robert Packard, popular Baylor physics professor, served in army intelligence in Hawaii during the Second World War. He explains how they intercepted messages:

"We studied Japanese code so we could copy. The Japanese had very poor equipment, so what they would do is they'd send V's, ‘di-di-di-dah, di-di-di-dah,' for you to tune your circuit. I'm talking about Japanese receivers would set them up, but, of course, we'd pick them up. And what we'd do is just wait because when they got ready to send a signal, they'd send in International Morse Code, A-H-R, ‘di-dah, di-di-di-dit, di-dah-dit.' That meant 'message to follow.' Then it'd be in Japanese numbers or code in five-letter blocks. But the Americans had broken the Japanese—well, really, they captured a—a code and had worked it out so we could do it. But we didn't do the interpretation of the Japanese. We copied it in Japanese. But we had Nisei who would translate it."

Interviewer: "Oh, I see."

He recalls welcome information his group handled:

"We copied the surrender message. The Japanese actually sent the surrender message—I'm—my birthday is the thirteenth of August—on the twelfth they surrendered. Now, you won't find that's the correct date, but they surrendered. We sent it, but they didn't announce it until the fourteenth. But, of course, it's secret and we can't say anything."

He remembers the reaction to the news once it was made public:

"There was so much celebration, I stayed in. I didn't even go in to Honolulu, knowing that it would probably be very unsafe. They might be firing guns. That's what you could hear all night was people firing from guns—of course, in the air, but still it's scary because they didn't have blanks."

To the west of Hawaii on Saipan, Judge John F. Onion Jr. from San Antonio was training for the invasion of Japan in the weeks leading up to the war's end. He tells how he learned that the invasion was off:

"I can remember one night we heard a low, dull roar. And I personally didn't know what it was. It was in a distance, and it was strange noise. And then pretty soon it got a little louder noise. It sounded like—at first like some machine, and maybe the machine was coming this way. But then you said, No, it's—it's too loud. And it just started roaring and roaring. And finally, we were suddenly aware that it was someplace—somebody else on the island yelling and screaming. And then about that time, somebody rushed in and said, ‘The Japanese have surrendered.' Well, we started yelling, too. It was quite a moment to send shivers down your spine, to think that the war was over."

On Aug. 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito's pre-recorded "Jewel Voice Broadcast" announced to the people of Japan that the government had agreed to the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded Japan's unconditional surrender. The country soon after entered a phase of Allied occupation.

American military personnel stationed in Paris take to the streets to celebrate the end of WWII.

Hear two Texas WWII veterans tell about learning that the war was over, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Surrender of Japan in WWII
(03:48 )

Original Airdate: November 15 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Before their vaccines were made available, measles and rubella swept through towns every few years, mostly infecting young children. Everyone was expected to suffer through them at some point.

Waco native Mary Sendón recalls her and her siblings' experience with the more serious of the two illnesses:

"All of us—four of us—got measles at the same time. I was even in grammar school; I didn't get it till I was in grammar school. And I remember that my grandfather and my dad—you know, the men really worried about the kids a lot. You'd be surprised how much attention they gave to them. But I know my grandfather got worried because my fever was way up high. And, you know, it was so high that my nails peeled off. And he got up and went to the drugstore and tried to get something from—there was an old Kassell's drugstore down on Eighth Street, and he got the druggist to give him something to get the fever down. And there were little powders. You had to mix them in a teaspoon of water and then drink a glass of water. Fever powders, that's what they were called. And he went down and got that.

"And, I tell you, we were sick for about a week. And we had to stay in a dark room, you know, because—to protect the eyes. And my grandmother was there, my great-aunt, and my father and mother, and everybody was taking care of all the sick kids. But it did affect my brother's eyes. That's why when he went into the service, he—they wouldn't take him because of his eyes. Of course, then the draft took him and put him in the air corps."

Dr. Howard Williams of Orange tells how rubella, commonly known as the German measles, possibly saved his life during WWII:

"I went up to Camp Atterbury [Joint Maneuver Training Center] in Indiana and finished my basic training there as a rifleman. And then we were all packed to go—we were in the 106th Division—and we're packed, ready to go that very week. And I got up with splotches all over me. I had measles—German. They put me in the hospital there at Camp Atterbury, and the 106th left. And then after ten days, they—the day the division's gone, they reassigned me. They sent me to a artillery observation battalion, and that was down at Camp Gordon, Georgia.

"Well, the 106th that I was—would have been with, was one that was totally destroyed in the [Battle of the] Bulge. They were all pre-college type, and the Germans burst across the line there, and—gosh, a division is like fifteen thousand people. And out of fifteen thousand, I think like seven—six or seven thousand were killed, and another five or six thousand were captured. So had I not had German measles, I don't know what would have happened to me."

Interviewer: "A lot of people you trained with, too."

"And all these people I'd trained with and all. I mean, they just disappeared."

Vaccines for measles and rubella were licensed in the U.S. in the 1960s. Since then, the number of cases has dropped by 99 percent, ending the role of these illnesses as anticipated life events.

The measles vaccine was first licensed in the United States in 1963.

Hear memories of once-common illnesses, in the segment that aired at KWBU-FM:

Measles and Rubella
(03:32 )

Original Airdate: December 6 (2011)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

The worst drought in Texas in recent memory belongs to the 1950s. The seemingly never-ending dry spell started in '49. By the time it came to an end in 1956, all of Texas's 254 counties, save 10, had been declared federal disaster areas.

Jess Lunsford, the founding administrator of South Texas Children's Home, describes how the dire conditions threatened the new campus near Beeville:

"We hauled out thirty tremendous oak trees out of that campus that died because of that drought. Well, I found an old rancher friend, Wiley Green, in San Angelo. And he had fought a water problem all his life out in that semi-arid country. And someone had told me about Wiley Green, and I went out and told him what we were up against. I spent the night there at his invitation. And the next morning I got ready to leave; he said, "I have a little check here for you." And he said, "You go back to that campus, and you get a good well dug and a good submersible pump or whatever kind of pump you think you need, and you start irrigating those trees." And it was [a] check for ten thousand dollars. And at that time that was the largest check I'd ever seen, and I remember how—how big it looked, you know. And I thought I was a pretty brave man, but I cried. It meant just that much to me because I knew this campus had the natural beauty, but it wouldn't have if you took those trees out."

Interviewer: "That's right."

"And they were dying. But it saved those trees. And the only reason they have a beautiful campus today is because Wiley Green gave me ten thousand dollar[s]."

Interviewer: "And the idea."

"Yeah."

Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, recalls the attempts to maintain Lover's Leap during the drought:

"There wasn't any water out there from anywhere until we ran a two-inch water line from North Nineteenth and Park Lake Drive out to Lover's Leap. But by the time that two-inch water line got to Lover's Leap, there wasn't much of a trickle coming out of it because it lost all of its pressure during the distance that it had to come. And I think that since that time it has been remedied, but we weren't able to water that. And we had beautiful plum trees up there in Lover's Leap, and every year the white native plums would bloom there on Lover's Leap, going around the circle at Lover's Leap. They produced fruit, and the people would go out there and pick it. And I think you had to use about twice as much sugar as you had plum pulp in order to make some jelly or jam out of it because it was—it was so tart. They were the wild plums, but they were beautiful blossoms. And it got so dry so long that we never could keep them watered, and they all died."

Welcome rains began to fall throughout Texas in the spring of 1956, ending a seven-year drought that had devastated agriculture, parks, lakes, and reservoirs.

Austin Lake in the 1950s. (Courtesy of LCRA Corporate Archives)

Here Texans talk about struggling with the crippling mid-century lack of rainfall, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

1950s Drought
(03:31 )

Original Airdate: January 24 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Three years in to World War I, a $5 million construction project began on the northwest side of Waco. A few months later in September of 1917, the new training headquarters Camp MacArthur welcomed 18,000 troops from Michigan and Wisconsin. Throughout the rest of the war, the thousands of soldiers stationed at Camp MacArthur became a part of Waco's culture.

Mary Sendón remembers the impact the camp had on her father's shoe business:

"The soldiers began to come to town and have their work done in town. They'd come to my dad's shop. He had a nice big shop where you could sit around and read newspapers, or maybe he'd have magazines there where they—they'd wait. And he always had that place full of soldiers. In fact, he had one of them come in there wanting to work for him one day. (laughs) But he would work late on Saturday night. He'd work day and night, not only on Saturday nights but on weeknights to catch up. Then pretty soon, the—the government gave him a contract to take care of the officers' boots. They all had to have so much done to their boots all the time. (laughs) Of course, the enlisted men would just come and have their own shoes fixed, you know. But he had a contract for those officers' boots. He made a lot of money during the war. That was a bonanza for him. And that's where he got really established."

During the life of the camp, strong ties were formed, as Sendón explains:

"So many of the soldiers that came to Waco at that time married Waco girls when the war was over. And some of them are still living here in Waco. I noticed two or three in the paper the other day at some reunion. And there was one of those Michigan soldiers that had married a Waco girl."

Less than two months after WWI ended, the government ordered Camp MacArthur's buildings to be dismantled and reused for such purposes as the construction of US-Mexican border stations. Cathryn Carlile recalls some of the remnants were used in the Edgefield neighborhood in Waco where she grew up:

"The houses in the 1C block of Hackberry were built in the early 1920s from the surplus lumber from the barracks from World War I. And all of these houses were exactly alike except the two older houses, one at 1C, which was part of the dairy, and the house next door to it. So there were ten houses just alike. And they were very sturdily constructed. Four rooms and a bath. And we did have the utilities. We had utilities."

Frank Curre Jr. bought a house on former Camp MacArthur grounds and tells what he and a neighbor did soon after:

"Was a black man come down the street. Had a mule and a single-disc plow and a homemade rake that they'd made. We asked him what he'd charge to plow up all that back lot all the way across and rake it down smooth. He got out there and did all that. He dug up old hard rubber tire wheels, buckets full of them brass teardrop caps off them old trucks. And we threw all that away. Look what they're worth right now."

Camp MacArthur officially closed on March 7, 1919. Since 1966, a historical marker has stood at the intersection of Park Lake Drive and Nineteenth Street as a reminder of the camp's brief but indelible existence.

Base Hospital, Camp MacArthur, Waco, TX. (Photo by Gildersleeve)

Listen to memories of a WWI training camp in Waco, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Camp MacArthur
(03:37 )

Original Airdate: January 31 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Traveling by train has become something of a novelty for most Americans, as the routes available from surviving lines are quite limiting. But during their heyday, passenger trains, with service offered in most cities, were the go-to mode of transportation for many Americans and offered the excitement of new faces and experiences.

Mary Sendón of Waco describes a notable train ride she took with her husband, Dr. Andrés Sendón:

"We were sitting there, and there was a family with a—two other children, but one of them was a little girl, cute little girl. Well, my husband liked kids, and he started talking to her. Well, she wouldn't leave him alone. She just wanted to sit with him and talk and talk and talk. So finally, two little boys came up and said—wanted to get in on the conversation. They had a book with the ABC's. Sendón said, ‘Can you say the ABC's?' They did, you know. They started off saying them. And then they told him, said, ‘Now, you say them.' Well, Sendón, to tease them, he would say, ‘A, B, D, F,'—you know, he'd skip around. And the little boy looked at him and said, ‘I thought you were a college professor.' (both laugh) Well, this little girl fell in love with my husband. Her name was Kathy. She was going to Wisconsin, and they lived in Weatherford, Texas. We got off at Detroit. They went on to Wisconsin. And when we came back we didn't see them anywhere around. I said, ‘I wonder if that family is on this train again.' Sure enough, I looked up, and there stood the father with this little girl. He said, ‘You know, I walked through every train [car] on this thing here trying to find you all. She wanted to know if y'all were here.' (interviewer laughs)

"So we got her name and address, and that started a correspondence. She would write cute little things, you know. Her mother would write some for her. A friendship started there between them and us and the little girl. And she asked my husband what his name was—and they were still with the ABC's—Sendón said, ‘Oh, call me XYZ.' Well, she'd write him letters—I still have them—‘Dear XYZ.' Well, do you know, to this day, those people write to me. That was the strangest friendship that we ever made. The little girl would come to see us once a year. She always had her—make her mother make cookies to bring him cookies. And now she's married, a nurse, has children, but they're still our friends. Isn't that strange how a train will do that for you? (interviewer laughs) That was our train friendship."

Marcile Sullins of Woodway recalls train travel during WWII with a trip she made to see her husband who was stationed in Colorado:

"I had never been away from home; I had never been out of the state of Texas. So I caught a train at Katy Depot with a six-weeks-old baby. (laughs) And during the war they put everything that they could find on the lines. I traveled in a chair car with windows that would not close, and at that time they still had coal-driven engines, steam engines, and the coal smoke came back into the car. And when we got to Colorado Springs, he had been waiting on us eight hours. We were dirty from smoke (both laugh) and tired."

Interest has renewed lately in passenger rail service, due in part to rising fuel costs and growing concerns about the environment. Perhaps one day in the future trains will flourish once more across the American landscape.

Streamliners first appeared in America during the Great Depression.

Hear tales of train travel, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

New Faces and Experiences on Passenger Trains
(03:43 )

Airdate: February 7

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Sometimes, love is not easy. The story that Gladys Casimir of Calvert tells of her road to marriage is testimony to that.

"When I was in Baylor I had a very good friend. We [were] planning to get married, but he wanted to study medicine. He went clear off to Philadelphia, and he kept putting off, putting off marriage. Finally in 1933, I decided I'd go to Philadelphia and—what shall I say?—have a showdown? Now or never. My younger sister and a friend—a girlfriend of hers from Waco, three of us struck out in a car. By this time my fiancé, as I thought he was, had quit medical school and was in New York City. So we went on, drove—can you imagine us driving on unpaved roads so many times?"

When the three girls reached New York, they met up with Casimir's friend and did some sightseeing:

"We went way out to Coney Island one night and rode all the things. We rode on a boat up the Hudson River going back. And on that boat ride going back, my friend and I were talking, and he confessed that he was already married and hadn't told me. And yet he'd been coming to see me. Well, my heart was broken, and I thought I'd never get over it."

Casimir went back home to Calvert and gradually became acquainted with an older gentleman through close friends:

"My husband was a widower. He had grown children and grandchildren. I never thought of him as a prospective suitor or husband or anything. Much to my surprise one time he asked me for a date. I turned him down. And later I was talking to my friends, and they both said, Oh, he's the finest man. You should have accepted. Why didn't you? So after they kept on singing his praises, the next time he asked me for a date, I accepted. After we'd gone together for a while, we planned to get married in the summer of '36. And then—his mother was still living, and she objected very much. So, until she died in '37, there were no definite plans for the future. So when she died in '37, we began to talk again about marriage."

Unfortunately, her husband-to-be then discovered some debt in the family business that he wanted to clear, and so they put their plans on hold again. Fast-forward to a Saturday in December 1940, when the night before Casimir had driven to Cameron in a torrential thunderstorm:

"I had told my husband-to-be that I was going to Waco that day, and when I got up the next morning he phoned to the house and said he wanted to go with me. Well, Saturday was a busy day at the store and how could he go? But he insisted. So we hadn't gone a few miles, he began to complain about my going the night before and I didn't have any business going. And I said, ‘Well, you don't have any right to tell me that I can't go.' And he says, ‘Well, I want that right, and I—we're going to have it.' Says, ‘We're going to get married today.' And I said, ‘Well, we can't!' And he said, ‘Why?' And I said, ‘Well, we don't have any license. We don't have—.' ‘Well, we'll take care of that.'"

The couple married later that day at the First Baptist Church in Gatesville and went on to enjoy nine years of marriage before his death in 1949.

Lengthy road trips in the early 1930s were not for the faint of heart.

Listen to an unconventional love story, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

A Long Road to Marriage
(03:50 )

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

The wedding industry, movies, and TV have created fantasies about lavish proposals and ceremonies that will ensure lasting marriages. But if the love and compatibility are there from the start, simplicity will get the job done.

Gloria Young of Waco started dating F. M. Young, the brother of her best friend, the summer before she went off to college. She reflects on their courtship:

"Used to, I was kind of - I would really like a boy until he liked me, and then I wasn't interested anymore. I'd like somebody else, you know. And I was never sure he liked me. So, I think that was part of the thing, that he was kind of a challenge, you know. (laughs)"

Young explains when marriage came into the picture:

"I'm not sure that he ever officially proposed to me. I think we just kind of, you know, knew we were going to get married. What he asked me was, 'If I buy you a ring, would you wear it?' (laughs) Actually, when I got that ring, I was a senior in college. I had had my wisdom teeth - I had embedded wisdom teeth, and I had had them taken out. My jaws were all swollen up kind of like a chipmunk. And one of his best friends was getting married to a girl that her parents had a big ranch out of Walnut Springs. And they were having the wedding up there, and he was the best man. And he had come by. He was late. And we got in the car, and we were driving up there. And, of course, I had the chipmunk cheeks and could barely open my mouth to talk or anything. And the romantic way I got my ring was he said, as we're driving about a hundred miles an hour down Highway 6 headed for Walnut Springs, 'I think there's something over there in the glove compartment you might like.' And so I open up the glove compartment, and there was my engagement ring."

Cathryn Carlile of Waco describes her marriage in December of 1947 to Woodrow Carlile, the brother of a close friend in Edgefield:

"I think we planned a June wedding. And I know I went to work and told my boss that I was going to get married in June. And he said, 'Well, I don't want you to be off in June.' He said, 'It'd be better if you took off (laughter) now.' We went ahead and we had our wedding, and I married at home by choice. For some reason, I was - had never been really interested in the big, traditional, formal wedding, although some of the things that I remember most were beautiful weddings that I had observed at Edgefield. I wore a tailored suit. Woody and I decorated our own wedding cake. We were probably thinking about the cost and the money. Richard Philpot, who was pastor at Edgefield for a long, long time, probably one of the - if not the most, the second-most admired preacher down there through our years, performed the ceremony. And we had family."

In 2011, the Youngs celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary, and the Carliles their 64th, proof that simplicity can stick.

Original Airdate: March 6 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

The 1911 Texas Almanac reported that approximately 15,000 automobiles were in service in the Lone Star State. The Almanac went on to say, "Although the automobile is counted a luxury and in the majority of cases, is used for pleasure, or as a means of transportation from the home to the office, the automobile is found in practical everyday life in all parts of the State."

Businessman Robert Lee Lockwood remembers his family was one of the first in Waco to own a car:

"We bought an E-M-F 30. And I doubt if they—many people ever heard of such a car. Course, we had to crank it with hand. It didn't have an electric starter. And we had a carbide setup where the water was in the top and the carbide below, and you'd loosen the valves so the water would drip on the carbide and create the gas for your lights. Course, the taillight was an oil lamp that was used."

Lockwood describes car trips in the early 1900s:

"Your tires were a constant problem. You wouldn't go to Dallas and back very often without having a puncture. And you usually had your extra tire or you'd have your patch to put on it. But they wasn't hard to get off in those days. (laughter) They wasn't—it wasn't difficult to do it. Course, you'd have to pump your tire up, and you'd carry your pump with you if you didn't have an extra. But going up there, why, it would take about four hours. The roads would—winding, and it would probably—well, you'd probably stop a time or two to get water in your car and to possibly check your oil or something. I know we drove up there many a time, but that was quite an event to drive to Dallas, and we'd usually spend the night up there and then would come back the next day. A little too much to go up and back the same day."

Waco civic leader Jack Kultgen talks about his first job selling cars in Dallas in 1921:

"It was a whole lot different than it is now because you took cars out and demonstrated them to people in their homes, and you had to make a dozen calls on them. And I had a little money. Where—I don't know where I got it, but I had it. And I paid list price for my own automobile to demonstrate with with this dealer. That was, it turns out, the only way I could get the job. He didn't give me a dime discount to buy a demonstrator."

Many people in the 1920s were buying cars for the first time, and Kultgen recalls that salespeople often had to show customers how to operate them:

"If you never taught anybody to drive a Model T, why, you got something to learn yourself. You had to throw it in low, and then you had to let it fly back, and then you—that was the left pedal, and then the right pedal was your brake. Your middle pedal was reverse. And you had to be manipulating those hand things all the time. Took a lot of coordination until you got used to it. If you got somebody that was a little clumsy—it was pretty hectic teaching anybody to drive."

Once considered a luxury, automobiles soon became part of the American Dream and are now difficult to live without.

1911 E-M-F 5-Passenger Fore Door Touring Car.

Listen to reminiscences of early transportation, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Early Automobiles
(03:32 )

Original Airdate: March 13 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

The sport of basketball was created in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Since that very first game that involved a soccer ball and two peach baskets, the sport has undergone many changes.

Baylor football coach Grant Teaff recalls when a high school coach in Snyder, Texas, drove him to basketball tryouts at San Angelo College in the early 1950s:

"We go to the gym, report in. Then they take us into the gym, and Coach [Max] Baumgardner, who was a UT guy, and his assistant was Phil George, a UT guy, and brought us in there and said, ‘Looks guys.' Said, ‘We got five scholarships. They're actually partial scholarships. You have to work if we give you one. We give you a job and give you a partial scholarship. Only have five of them. And so we're going to have a tryout for those five.' And I'm thinking, Well, I wonder how this is going to work. Said, ‘Okay, guys. In a moment, Coach George is going to come up here, and he's got two big boxes. Those boxes are filled with boxing gloves. And you pick you a pair of boxing gloves, put those on, and this is a basketball,' he said. ‘Now, we're going to just split you up. Half of you take your shirts off and half of you leave your shirts on. We'll be shirts and skins, and we're going to have a basketball game.' He said, ‘All right, when Coach George throws the ball up, we want to see who the last five standing are.' So there was my chance for an education. And you better believe I was one of the last five standing. And I got the scholarship. Had nothing to do with basketball. It was brawl."

Interviewer: "A fight broke out, yeah."

"It was brawl. That's all you can say about it. Now, of course, you'd be in twelve thousand lawsuits, and the NCAA would send you to somewhere else. (laughs)"

Wilma Buntin played on the girls' basketball team at John H. Reagan High School in Houston in the 1920s. She describes the uniforms:

"We had a sweater that came over, and it had to have long sleeves. And then we had these black bloomers that were box-pleated. And I spent every Saturday getting that attire ready for the next week. We had electric irons by that time, but it would have been rough if it'd been before that. Let me tell you, before it was all over we began to have the shorts, but they came right here at the knees. I imagine they'd call them clam diggers now."

Buntin explains how the court differed for girls during that era:

"It was divided into thirds. When it was divided in thirds, that was much more difficult for us because the stops and starts were so sudden. There were certain lines you didn't go over; it was called a foul. But they soon realized that was harder to play than what the boys were playing because the boys could get stretched out, and there we had to observe all those lines. And then they had the toss-up, and if you happened to have somebody tall as you are, well, this poor little fellow on the other team never had a chance. So—and you had to stay on your side of the line. The ones who were standing waiting had to be quick enough to know where that person was going to tip the ball, and they'd try to get around there and get it. And they've come a long way in kind of evening that out. They thought they were making it easier on us, and they weren't."

Over the years, many new rules and regulations have been put in place to make men's and women's basketball the sports they are today. Who knows what changes are in store for the future.

In the 1920s, as Buntin explains, female basketball players wore significantly more clothing than their male counterparts.

Hear memories of how basketball once was, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Changes in Basketball
(03:52 )

Airdate: March 20

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Dr. Stanley E. Rutland served as president of Paul Quinn College from 1969 through 1976. Under his leadership the college enjoyed many improvements, among them accreditation for the first time with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1972.

Dr. Norman G. Ashford describes the climate of Paul Quinn in 1971, when he came on board as a biology professor:

"I remember well one time where we had a meeting in the evening where we were going over the accreditation procedures and the required reports, et cetera. Well, we started meeting, I believe it was at seven o'clock in the evening, and that meeting lasted till two o'clock in the morning. So it gives you an idea of the events taking place."

Dr. Rowena Keatts explains she was working as a cataloger in the Paul Quinn library when Rutland enlisted her help in getting the college accredited:

"He walked down there and walked in that back door and says, ‘Mrs. Keatts, I am making you head librarian. I've checked your transcript, and what I want you to do is go back'—I didn't have my master's degree then. I think I lacked nine hours of having it. He said, ‘I'm making you head librarian here.' And I said, ‘No, you didn't either.' I got my things and went home.

"When I got home my husband said to me, said, ‘What are you doing? What have you been doing all day?' And I said, ‘Shoot. I've had twenty-five years of teaching. That man come telling me he's making me head librarian, and I'm not going to do it.' He didn't say a word. But he looked at me, and he continued—we were having dinner—and he said, ‘Well, can you do it?' I said, ‘Yes, I can do it, but I'm not going to. I'm going to sit down and draw my teacher's retirement when I get older.' He said, ‘I believe if I were you, and those old people paid ten cents a brick to build some of those buildings there when they were built, and you can do just that little bitty thing, and you don't want to do it? I believe if I were you, I believe I'd go do it.' I didn't do a thing but get all my things, put them back in my car and brought them—come back over to Paul Quinn and sit down."

Although reluctant at first, Keatts took over the task at hand with gusto:

"When the team came in they had no problem whatever with the library. That library was in tip-top shape. "

Interviewer: "I see."

"But I tell you, Dr. Rutland was a man that if you would work with him—he was a learned man. I dare say he is one of the best presidents I've ever seen because he went to each department to find out what was needed, what was lacking. And if they had to have money, he went somewhere and got it. The people here in Waco didn't like him too much because—at first, because they said he stayed on the plane too much going places. But when he went someplace, went those places, he brought something back with him."

Interviewer: "I see."

"And he was able to see and he knew how to meet the needs of Paul Quinn College. And he did it."

Paul Quinn College left Waco in 1990 and moved into the former Bishop College campus in Dallas. In 2009, SACS revoked Paul Quinn's accreditation, but two years later the college attained membership with another accrediting agency, Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools.

Paul Quinn's new campus in Dallas.

Hear recollections of an important milestone for Paul Quinn College:

1972 Accreditation of Paul Quinn College
(03:36 )

Original Airdate: March 27 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In 1881, Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Co. formed with the purpose of operating exchanges in Arkansas and Texas. The company took over exchanges in Galveston and Houston and started several others across the state. Waco's very own telephone exchange opened in the fall of 1881 with 45 subscribers.

Robert Lee Lockwood remembers the calling situation in the early 1900s:

"We had two telephones in Waco. There were two different and separate telephone systems. We called it at that time ‘the old and the new phone.' And they were just as separate and independent as could be. And we had two telephones, and I remember our phone number: 2-2-5. It was a low number. And that's when—when we got our phone, that was how many phones were in the city of Waco on that system, and then the other system came in. And it was really—you almost had to have two phones if you wanted to reach everybody that had a phone because some had what we called ‘the new phone' and some had ‘the old phone.' But on account of the various work my father was always in, why, he felt he needed both phones, and we always had that."

Mary Sendón recalls the first telephone installed in her family's home:

"Was one of these that hangs on the wall; you know, you had to crank it. We hadn't had that telephone a week until it was raining hard one day, and they had lightning and thunder. And lightning struck that telephone, and it started burning. (laughs) I wish we could have had videos in those days. Everybody in the family was running for a pan of water or a glass of water trying to put the fire out."

Sendón explains the ins and outs of using an exchange during that era:

"Telephones were kind of hard to get in the first days. You had to take a party line. The first one we got we had to take a party line. It was very ineffective because I would get on a line with somebody else, and somebody else would start talking to me like he thought that was the person he was talking to. And, boy, you'd just be surprised how much gossip we heard! (interviewer laughs) I solved a scandal there on the telephone one day because I was calling my plumber, and the plumber's daughter was having an affair with some important man downtown. And when I got the line, it was the plumber's wife talking to that man, and so I found out the whole story. (laughs)"

She describes a great-aunt who worked at the telephone building at Fourth & Washington:

"She made a—quite a hit with all the businessmen because she had a beautiful voice and she had such a kind voice that the businessmen said she was the perfect telephone operator. And my mother used to tell me that on Christmas Eve she would take my mother and another one of the cousins with her to work so they could help her carry home all the gifts that the businessmen would send her up there at the office."

In 1949, the Waco exchange, which comprised nearly 26,000 telephones, switched over from a manual switchboard to the dial system. With this new setup, customers could dial a number themselves and no longer had to go through an operator.

With early crank telephones like this one, users turned the handle on the side to ring for an operator.

Hear Wacoans reminisce about telephones in the early 1900s, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Early Telephone Service in Waco
(03:36 )

Original Airdate: April 17 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Even with its dry spells, wind, and blistering heat, Waco has enjoyed a bounty of flowers over the years.

Mary Sendón recalls the Cotton Palace expositions held in the early 1900s in the Bell's Hill area:

"They kept the grounds so beautiful. You never saw so many chrysanthemums in all your life as you would see at the Cotton Palace. They planted those things early. Every row that led up to the new—there were several different areas—they led to the main building—and every one was bordered with chrysanthemum flower beds. And they had the flower building, the florist building there, with all of the flowers. Florists came together even from outside and had beautiful arrangements."

Florist Harry Reed describes a few of the local flowers his family sold before it became common to import flowers from all over the world:

"We raised a lot of marigolds in the summertime. That's a crop that you can—an outdoor crop that you can grow. We grew dahlias, a lot of dahlias, because we couldn't get much else. And the flower now known as lisianthus, grows wild down around Willis, Texas. And we used to ship those wildflowers. About the only two flowers we had during July and August, that time of the year, was bluebells and marigolds, and we sold lots of them. (laughs) But now nobody would think about using those things."

Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, tells about some of the vegetation added to Cameron Park during his tenure:

"The vinca vine that grows wild on the slopes, we transplanted that into various hills for soil erosion as well as color because in the springtime it would come out with a beautiful blossom. And then we would plant bluebonnets out there; these would be along the scenic right-of-way. One of them was going up toward the Cameron Park Clubhouse. That was one of the big areas that we put the bluebonnets. And it bloomed for years until the drought just got it all."

With funding from former Congressman Bob Poage, Miss Nellie's Pretty Place was created in Cameron Park in the 1980s. Max Robertson was Waco Parks and Recreation director during that time and describes the implementation of the site:

"I remember the first year had the most magnificent show of wildflowers, and I've not seen it look anywhere near as good as it looked that first year. [In] fact, we had, in our research—and Mr. Poage was highly involved in that—we were hooked up with, at the time, one of the top wildflower persons in the state, a fellow by the name of John Thomas who owns a company called Wildseed. This John Thomas came in and seeded the park. It was a beautiful red—it was a poppy that actually was not a native species that Mr. Thomas said, ‘This is going to be a sure-fire flower so you'll have it when you open.' And he was absolutely right; it was a beautiful sea of red over that Miss Nellie's."

Perhaps because of the frequent harsh weather conditions in Central Texas, residents can enjoy the contrasting beauty of the area's flowers all the more.

Texas bluebells, once a popular item at Reed's Flowers.

Hear memories of Central Texas flower offerings, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Waco and Flowers
(03:44 )

Airdate: May 1

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

During the Great Depression, newspapers struggled alongside other businesses throughout the country, as many of their customers were having to pinch pennies like never before.

At the time of this 1974 interview, Harlon Fentress was chairman of the board of directors of Newspapers Incorporated, which owned the Waco Tribune-Herald. He recounts his days in the advertising department of the Waco News-Tribune during the early thirties:

"We had a good many promotions because business was bad in those days, and we would create events which would supply advertising. Well, let's say we had a Father's Day coming up. Most of the merchants didn't pay much attention to it. We would create a Father's Day special edition or a special section of the paper. Things of that nature."

In addition to the Waco papers, in the 1930s Newspapers Incorporated owned several small-town newspapers in Texas. Fentress recalls the challenge of collecting payments in Breckenridge, where the bulk of distribution was rural:

"Our circulation man would start out with some old model car—it was probably an old Willys-Knight or something like that—with a half stock trailer on behind it. He would come back in the evening with a couple of sheep, a dozen chickens and four or five dozen eggs and slab of bacon. (laughs) They paid for their subscription that way."

Longtime Waco newspaper editor Harry Provence describes the Waco Times-Herald, the afternoon paper, during the Depression years:

"The staff was trimmed to the very bone, and the people who were still there, who'd been there during the early thirties, recalled 10 percent salary cuts more than once just to keep the thing going. As a matter of fact, in 1938 we had a 10 percent salary cut—out of a clear blue sky in June of '38. I got married and got a salary cut all in one easy operation. (laughter) They never got to the point of requiring us to buy our own pencils, but they doled them out like they were selling them to us. And it was just against the rules to spend any money that you could possibly get out of. The papers were small; there wasn't enough advertising to—well, if we got a sixteen-page paper we just thought the millennium had come. Most of the issues, if you go back through our files, are eight, ten, and twelve pages, year after year, during—all during the thirties."

Provence explains the journalism term close editing and its importance during the thirties:

"The minimum number of words to convey the—the story. As I said awhile ago, we had small newspapers; our standing orders were to get all the news in the paper, and that meant that the superfluous language just had to go. And we wore out a—many a black pencil marking through whole paragraphs and sentences and words."

The Waco News-Tribune and Waco Times-Herald weathered the economic slump of the 30s and merged together in 1973 to form the Tribune-Herald. No doubt Fentress and Provence could have drawn parallels between the Great Depression and the recent Great Recession concerning their impact on the newspaper industry.

Throughout the 1930s, newspaper employees had to make do with a shoestring budget and no-frills work environment.

Hear memories from Waco newspaper giants, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Newspapers during the Great Depression
(03:43 )

Original Airdate: May 15 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

In August 1910 on the corner of Fifth & Austin in downtown Waco, construction began on a state-of-the-art, steel-frame office building. Founders and board members of the newly formed Amicable Life Insurance Company had originally planned a structure with eight stories, but that number soon rose to seventeen and then twenty-two.

Construction on the building, known as the "ALICO Building," lasted a year and was the talk of the town, with crowds of onlookers common. Lee Lockwood remembers being in those crowds:

"They would carry those big steel beams clear up to the top of that building, and we'd just stand there with our mouth open."

Mary Sendón recalls the town's attitude toward the structure:

"My dad said, ‘That's crazy! What are they going to do? Put up one skyscraper in this little town?' And everybody made fun of it right at first because it was so tall. And when Will Rogers came to Waco and spoke at the auditorium—the old auditorium—he said that Waco was a tall skyscraper surrounded by Baptist churches. (laughter) And I think somebody else mentioned that it was a lonely spire surrounded by Baptists. Of course, the Baptists always got the brunt of the jokes. But my dad finally—they finally realized that Waco did need some growth. And, you know, they began to build other buildings, some six-story buildings. And they thought it was pretty good. Then they began to be proud of it. And the fact that it withheld the tornado was another thing. They thought, Well, that was a good contractor. He knew—he knew what he was doing."

During that devastating storm on May 11, 1953, Victor Newman was in his office on the 4th floor of the ALICO Building with business partner Floyd Casey. Newman describes their experience:

"Well, I looked up and, oh, the wind was blowing, and it was getting bad. But I'd been in storms, but I had never been in a storm like that. And Mr. Casey and I—he was there, and we were sitting there and looking. And I said, ‘Look, Mr. Casey,' and a telephone pole come down the street. It wasn't turning over or anything, but all the wires were hanging on it. And it was just floating just about right by our office, just going down. And when Mr. Casey saw that he said, ‘Vic,' said, ‘We have a tornado.' And so I said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?' He said, ‘I'm going to get under my desk.' And I said, ‘Well, I believe I'll get under mine,' and so we did. And we could hear all the noises upstairs. I thought that the building had broken in two, people just running down the stairs screaming and this, that, and the other. But when we—it was over—well, you know, that was plastered walls and things. But when it was over, there were no cracks in there, but it was just little sand, plaster, all over the top of our desk[s]. In other words, it was shaken that much. And they said up above that—up on the top floors—it was swaying enough that the desks was going from one side of the office to the other."

The building was one of the few downtown to survive the tornado. Portions of its façade were altered in the 1960s, and today the ALICO Building continues to tower over downtown Waco and serves as the home office for American-Amicable Life Insurance Company of Texas and its corporate family, in addition to offering rental office space. It's also a comforting landmark to locals, its neon lights visible for many miles at night.

The ALICO Building remains the tallest structure in downtown Waco.

Listen to memories of a Waco landmark, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

ALICO Building
(03:47 )

Original Airdate: May 22 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Among southern states, Texas was a leader in the desegregation of public education. In 1964, Texas accounted for approximately 60 percent of integrated school districts in the South.

Robert Lewis Gilbert was the first black teacher to be hired in a white school in Waco and describes taking on that position:

"Everybody was telling me before I went, Well, you know, white kids, you're going to really have to do something to teach them, you know. And—and there was a kind of a question in my mind as to whether or not I would be able to keep up with these kids if they were so smart. But after a few moments of observation during my student teaching, I detected that there were some—some geniuses, some average, and some mediocre whites just as there were blacks. And, boy, I said, ‘Well, you know, this is'—it dawned on me that, you know, people are people. And those kids, many of them, they'd looked for guidance toward knowledge, and they were looking for me to pour it out. And many people had me under the impression that I was to go there and these children were going to ask me certain questions and things that I wouldn't be able to answer them, and it would show me as inferior."

Maggie Washington pioneered teacher integration in the Midland Independent School District. She recalls the reactions from her new white co-workers:

"Even the custodian tried to give me a hard time. A lot of teachers were so disgruntled that they were working with a black teacher that they went to the principal. He was a Christian man. And he said, ‘Now, anybody who doesn't want to work with Maggie Washington, put your request for transfer on my desk.' So several of them put their request for transfer on his desk. And one man on my wing, he went to the principal and said, ‘I just want to know something. What criteria did you use to get Maggie Washington here?' And the principal told him; not only told him, he let him read it."

At a PTA meeting, that teacher made sure Washington spoke last:

"But, baby, I spoke. And I was talking about my favorite subject as related to everyday life. I brought it right on down front to them. When that meeting was over, the white parents just rushed up. Girl, you couldn't see me. And there was a—a teacher whose husband was there, and he was a doctor. He said, ‘Oh, put her on the air. She is good.' So the principal called me in the next morning and just fell out laughing. (laughter) He said, ‘You fixed them good.' I said, ‘I wasn't trying to. I just discussed social studies.'"

Washington also faced a challenge in winning over some of her students. She recalls an encounter with a girl in her fifth-grade class:

"I said, ‘Eldemina, what's wrong, honey?' ‘My mama doesn't like Negroes.' I said, ‘Oh, why?' She said, ‘She said they steal and fight.' I said, ‘Are those Negroes that live in Mexican town that—that's doing all that stealing and fighting?' ‘Oh, no ma'am.' (interviewee laughs) ‘Okay,' I said, ‘you tell your mother that.'"

The Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education is more than half a century behind us. But since then, de facto re-segregation has become a growing concern, especially in large cities in the Northeast and Midwest, where the most segregated schools today are located.

Teacher integration typically took place in areas where student integration was under way.

Hear from two African Americans who inaugurated teacher integration in Texas public schools:

First Black Teachers in White Schools
(03:42 )

Original Airdate: May 29 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Since its dedication in 1910, Waco's Cameron Park has grown from 125 to more than 400 acres, with land gifts from the Cameron family, and has provided children with countless hours of exercise and enjoyment.

Charlie Turner of Hewitt recalls playing in the park as a young boy in the 1950s and 60s:

"There were some little wading pools we would go play in, and then, of course, I would get in trouble every now and then because after I got in the wading pool, I'd get back in the dirt by the flowers but had a real good time. And, you know, it was just a great place to play because where I lived, there was no grass in the backyard. So going into a park like Cameron Park, it was like a kid's dream because there were all the trees down near the Pecan Bottoms. There were these big swings that I remember and this merry-go-round and the seesaws, and then there was a climbing ladder and then the monkey bars.

"Every now and then—I had an old Tonka truck. It was a moving van Tonka truck that I had a string on, and I'd take it with me once in a while and pull it around on the—on the street part that was paved. If I had a ball, I could throw it as hard as I wanted to and not get in trouble because it was in the neighbors' yard. I could play ball; I could hit the ball as hard as I could. Cameron Park was a paradise to me."

He describes the many adventures the park afforded him:

"There were these trees there, there was vines growing through the trees, and I remember moss down there—whether it was there or not. As a kid, I remember it. And I remember seeing pictures in books about these forests and all, and so when I'd get in Cameron Park I'd go looking. And here were these forest-like-looking areas that I remembered from reading the books. And I could be in England, or I could be in Germany, or I could just be in the Brazilian jungle, or—so Cameron Park took on a new personality each time. I was in the Amazon one time. I was in Nottingham Woods the next time, the Sheriff pursuing me, and then, trying to get away from the piranhas in the little wading pools and all, you know. I had a—well, we'll say I had a fertile imagination."

Frank Curre of Waco shares memories of Cameron Park from the 20s and 30s:

"Proctor Springs. Being able to go down there and get that cold water coming out of that hill and get in that little pool. And we could take watermelons down there in the summer and put them in that cold water and get them good and cool and break them open and eat. They had duck pens with exotic ducks in them for you to visit and a little pool for them to swim in. It was just great to be in the park."

Curre explains that some of his favorite activities involved the Brazos:

"Mama used to tell us, ‘You boys don't get into that water down—' talking about the river. And we'd spend hours in the water and come home in the afternoon, and our eyes are bloodshot. And she'd say, ‘Y'all been in that water?' ‘No, ma'am.' And your eyes are bloodshot. (laughter) But we had ropes tied off the trees hanging over the river, and we'd swing into the river. We'd swim from one side to the other. We just had a ball. We'd play piggy-wiggy or something: touch each other and try to swim away and all that stuff. But we had a great time. We loved fishing. We always kept throw lines in the river."

Today, Cameron Park remains mostly undeveloped and is one of the largest municipal parks in Texas. No matter what new technology and toys come along, nothing will replace exploring and playing in the great outdoors.

A vintage postcard of Cameron Park in Waco, Texas. It's easy to see how the park could transport Charlie Turner to other places and times. (Photo
courtesy of The Texas Collection)

Hear two gentlemen discuss their earliest memories of spending time in Cameron Park, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Childhood Memories of Cameron Park
(03:44 )

Original Airdate: June 5 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

An annual tradition for many students and teachers is looking for summer employment. During the 1940s, these jobs were becoming easier to find, with a recovering American economy and the war overseas.

Jane Martin, former missionary in East Africa, lists a few of the summer jobs that she held in the 1940s to pay her way through Mars Hill College in North Carolina:

"I worked for the government at the Department of Interior, and I worked for the Department of Navy."

Interviewer: "In Washington, DC, those things are possible."

"You know, but you don't say that I—you were sorting mail and things like that. (both laugh) You weren't—yes. I worked one summer for a community program for underprivileged children. I worked for a department store, but I wasn't working in the store; I was in the warehouse. And to my amazement, they came to me one day, and I thought, Oh my, have I done something wrong? They said, Come with us. We want to talk to you about something. And they put me on the loading dock, as a fourteen-year-old, to receive the trucks as they came in. Their concern was—I had a—I was sitting in a little enclosed room. Their concern was that the language would be pretty bad. But when the truckers arrived bringing in the goods for the department store, they see this young teenager, (both laugh) and they—they minded their language."

Dr. Eugene Jud, former executive director of Caritas in Waco, remembers an encounter he had while teaching in Corpus Christi:

"At the end of that year, we had a big PTA meeting on the end of the year. A man came up, was a big old guy; name was George Bellows. He said he just wanted to meet the teacher that helped his son become a public speaker. I accepted his comments, and that was fine."

Jud describes how that meeting helped him in the summer of 1941, when he was looking for a temporary job:

"Teachers always do a little moonlighting. So I went out to the naval air station. Just everybody would be going out there from all over the country; they—they were applying. So we'd go to the personnel department, and I sat there a long time waiting for my turn. And one of the guys who came in, I said, ‘Who are you waiting for?' And he said, ‘I come—I'm waiting to see George Bellows.' And I said, ‘Who's he?' He said, (laughs) ‘Oh, he's the guy [who] runs this place.' I said, ‘Is he George Bellow Jr.'s dad?' He said, ‘Yeah—that's'—and said, ‘I'm George's good friend.' So I—that gave me an idea. So instead of going and seeing a personnel man or filling out all the forms, well, I went in to see George Bellows. (laughter)

"I introduced—he remembered me. And he asked what I wanted, and I told him I wanted a summer job. And he just said—he buzzed his little buzzer and called for his personnel director. And he says, ‘Put this man on.' (laughter) The personnel director was very smart. He asked me a question or two, and he said, 'I'll tell you what: you report here tomorrow, and you report in my department. You'll be one of the personnel.' So I became one of the members of the personnel staff."

As long as a college education is not free and educators are underpaid, many students and teachers will continue to seek out temporary jobs during the summer months.

Sorting mail in the 1940s.

Hear remembrances of seasonal jobs from long ago, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Summer Jobs in the 1940s
(03:55 )

Original Airdate: August 7 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Swimming is a favorite summer activity in Texas, as it provides respite from sweltering temperatures.

Charles Armstrong grew up in the Bell's Hill area of Waco and describes where he and other boys would go to cool off:

"And from Twenty-ninth Street over where the Baylor stadium is now, there was a fence across there, and it wasn't anything but mesquite patch up there where the stadium is. And it had a little—back over there by the railroad track, had a creek come through there, and it was pretty clear water and had swimming hole up there called Little Lake. And we'd go up there and go swimming in Little Lake. And it was—you had to cut across that pasture there by where the stadium is now to get down to it."

The swimming hole was isolated, and the boys were very informal, as Armstrong explains:

"If you had some swimming trunks, fine. If you didn't, fine. You could just go in naked, whatever. (laughter) And when a train come along, we all got up and paraded for them as they come by. They'd [be] sitting there with white tablecloths on them tables and little things like we keeps on the table here, little—look like a little lamp there with a candle in it, you know, sitting on a table and people all dressed up in suits and everything. We'd stand out there naked [and] wave at them. (laughter) But we did that—we did that many, many times."

Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, remembers the role of swimming in his childhood in Waco:

"My father worked for the police department as a detective, and they were given a pass to the municipal swimming pool, or ‘the beach,' over on North Fourth Street. This was a season pass to go swimming free, and so my brother and I—my brother Jack and I—always went down to the swimming pool once a day to go swimming. Later on in the years, when I became about twelve years old, I was hired as the basket boy, and the basket boy is a young man that takes the baskets that they had there and they would give to the patrons to put their clothes in when they changed into their bathing suits. Then it was my job to put their baskets in the proper numbers in the proper location in the basket room with the swimming pool, and to give the patrons their basket when they came back."

John Lott Jr. of Goliad recalls that escaping the heat was sometimes a family affair:

"Well, we went to the river every summer for about a month: Cousin Henry and Cousin Ella and Virginia Mae, Aunt Helen and Happy and Butch and our family and Aunt Hattie and Atch. And we had tents, and we'd camp down there at the bend, and Cousin Willy even came down and made a swimming suit out of a gunny sack: cut holes in it and put his feet in it and rolled it up and tied it around here. And we had a diving board and a swing. I know we had a—Dad made them a canvas house, partition with canvas, to where women and men could put on their bathing suits."

Swimming helps make the summers in Texas bearable and more enjoyable. That initial splash every time erases all discomfort from the stifling heat.

Boys enjoying a swimming hole. (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Hear fond childhood memories of swimming, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Summertime Swimming
(03:44 )

Original Airdate: August 21 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Bullies are people who try to harm or intimidate others who they perceive as weaker. It starts in childhood.

Maggie Langham Washington moved to Waco in the fifth grade and remembers how she was an easy target for bullies:

"If you were a minister's child that's new in a school, you saw hard time, a real hard time because kids would do things to you just because they felt like you weren't supposed to do anything back to them because you were a minister's—you were preacher's child, preacher's brat. And after a while that got a little old with me. I decided that I wanted to be a regular person."

Washington recalls a story involving a girl who others had told her was cruel:

"And we were playing pass ball, and I was a tomboy. I could jump, leap high, and get that ball. So she decided, let me guard her, and I heard her. I trembled in my boots. I kept letting her get the ball, and finally I decided this is just not going to work. So when I knew they were throwing the ball to her, I just stepped in front of her and jumped up and got it, and she hit me. When I realized what was happening, the lady that was supervising the game, Mrs. Bevis, one of the teachers, was tapping me on my shoulder saying, ‘Langham, Langham, that's enough.' So that called for a spanking. I knew that. So it was reported to my homeroom teacher; we were both in the same class. And my homeroom teacher carried me into the cloakroom and she says, ‘Every time I hit something, you holler.' (laughter) And I did. And then when it came time to get Henrietta, every time she hit she needed to holler. So nobody in my class ever knew I didn't get a spanking."

Interviewer: "Uh-huh. Yours was all dramatics."

"Yes."

Mary Darden of Waco describes an encounter with a bully in sixth grade in Connecticut that helped shape her passion for social justice:

"And he was beating the crud out of this kid. I mean, the kid was bleeding, and nobody—everybody was standing around, nobody doing anything about it. I went running in, and I pushed the kid out of the way he was beating up and I got in a fight with him. And I started fighting with him, and he—he hurt me. He—I mean, I had a black eye, I'm sure. And, I mean, my face showed it. I mean, you could tell for a week afterwards I'd been in a fight. But I stood there and fought him until the teacher came out and broke us up. And I realized at that point that I was not probably going to draw a line between my personal safety and, you know, that I would take a stand."

Bullying shows no signs of dissipating, especially with today's cyberculture that offers even more methods of terrorizing others. Although bullying is often dismissed as a normal part of growing up, it is harmful, and in some cases the effects last a lifetime.

At Maggie Washington's school, a bully took advantage of a game of pass ball.

Hear memories of bullies at school, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Bullies
(03:21 )

Airdate: Original Airdate: August 28 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Some of the clearest memories from our youth usually include times we got in trouble.

Victor Newman of Waco grew up amidst cowboys in West Texas. In 1923, at the age of ten, he came to live at the recently opened Waco State Home. Newman explains how the home reacted to his cowboy ways:

"Well, every time I turned around, well, somebody would grab me up and give me a spanking because of something that I said. And so finally, well, one man there, he spanked me one day. He said, ‘Do you know why I spanked you?' I says, ‘Yeah, because you're bigger than I am.' He said no. He—but they realized the language I was using was what I had heard all my life out there on the ranch. I didn't know I was saying anything wrong."

Benny Martinez of Goliad recalls getting caught in his brief life of crime in the 1940s:

"I remember once, my brother and I were stealing watermelons—and that's something we country boys did. We used to go in the river here by the rail—where the train crossed, and we were naked as a jaybird. We'd go across the river, up the hill, and we'd go down and crawl in the grass, and go in and grab a couple of watermelons. And this man had hundreds of them. And we'd crawl back and get in the river and let them cool off, and then we'd break them open, you know, and we'd eat them. And the old man told my daddy, ‘Your boys are coming over and stealing my watermelons. They think I don't see them, but I see them.' ‘I'll take care of them.'

"'I don't want you boys going over there and stealing any—' ‘No, sir.' That put an end to that. My father put that strap on me once. One time he whipped me, and that was it. He made a believer out of me. I didn't want no more of that."

Waco native Helen Geltemeyer describes a scrape she, her youngest brother, and two of his friends got themselves into in the 1930s:

"One day my brother, oldest brother, had a brand new car—Ford. And I don't know why he left it at home, but Mama had gone to town shopping. And there that car sat, so my brother decided he wanted to go out to the lake, go swimming. That's before the big lake was built."

Interviewer: "Right, right."

"I said, ‘If you go, I'll tell on you. You'll have to let me go.' He called Bubby, and he called Allah B. And we picked them up on Twentieth and then right here on Seventeenth. He got his daddy's watch. Away we went out Twenty-fifth. And at Twenty-fifth and Maple, he was turning there, and he—wasn't very smart—we turned over. (laughter) Here I was barefooted with shorts, and I was screaming. I had Bubby's watch. And they said, Helen! Helen! You're stomping me! They let me out first. Bubby said, ‘Where's my daddy's watch?' I had it just aholding on to it. Anyway, we wrecked my brother's car. We finally got somebody to get us home, and my brother left town, and I had to face the consequences. He joined the circus. It had just been here. But he came home. He saw how easy it was. And these boys were good boys. We were just going to go swimming for a little while and come back. That's why we took the watch."

Stories of getting in trouble when we were little can make good icebreakers, for we all have them in common.

Benny Martinez remembers when his father found out he and his brother had been taking watermelons from a nearby patch.

Hear childhood memories of getting in trouble, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Getting into Trouble
(03:35 )

Original Airdate: September 11 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

In Texas, high school football is much more than a sport—it's a way of life—and many young boys dream of the day when they can participate and help lead their hometown teams to victory.

Baylor football coach Grant Teaff recalls an idea he had for improving his football game in Snyder, Texas:

"Early on I said, ‘Look, if I'm going to be ready for Friday night's game, I think I need mental rest, you know. I can be better at playing if I'm mentally rested.' So I decided that I would not go to school on Friday before the game on Friday night. The—two or three other guys had sort of seen what I'd done, and they decided, well, that'd be good for us too. If he's getting ready mentally, we can get ready, so they missed school."

Teaff describes how his coach reacted to this plan:

"So we all jovial, come in, getting ready for the game, we're going to win this game, and walk in the door. And there stood Mule Kaiser with his arms folded looking right at us. And I thought, Uh-oh. We walked in, and he said, ‘Grant, where were you this afternoon? Where were the rest of you guys this afternoon? You weren't in school.' I said, ‘Well, Coach, I—you know, I—you know, you told us it's really important to be mentally ready for this game, and I was getting mentally ready. Really, I feel great. I'm ready to go.' And he said, ‘You missed school.' I said, ‘Yes, sir. To get mentally ready.' He said, ‘You know that you can't do that.' I said, ‘No, but Coach, it's for the team.' So he said, ‘Come out here in the middle of the field.' Now, here's all my teammates around, and I was the example. And the other two, three guys were going to get it as well. But he said, ‘Okay, bend over,' and I bent over. And he had some lumber from somewhere. And he started on my rear end, and the splinters, pieces of wood were flying, the guys were over in their little locker areas covering up their head. I mean, he was—he whacked us all pretty good. And he said, ‘Now, about next week, what do you think about mental preparation?' I said, ‘Oh, Coach, I'm going to be in school. (laughs) I promise you that.'"

Baylor graduate Bill Patterson Jr. played for the Chicago Bears in 1939 and Pittsburg Steelers in 1940. But he recalls how, at one point in high school, he wanted to leave football:

"In my sophomore year I was getting hurt, and it was hot in workout, and the field was rough. And I wanted to quit, but I didn't want it to be my initiative. So I devised a scheme and told my mother that either I had to quit football or make poor grades. And I thought [for] sure that my mother would say, ‘Well, if it's a choice, you must quit football.' So then I would go to my coach and with big tears rolling down my cheeks, I'd say, ‘Coach, my mother is going to make me quit.' (laughter) But my mother was wise and she said, ‘Bill, if you don't want to play, I don't believe I'd quit in the middle of the season. Why don't you play out this season and then just don't come out next year.' And between that time and the next year I gained weight and maturity and decided I'd have another go at it."

On Friday nights during the fall, stadium lights continue to shine bright throughout Texas, building character on the field and bringing together communities off the field.

1930s high school football

Hear Texans reminisce about high school athletics, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Playing Football in High School
(03:44 )

Original Airdate: December 4 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Pawnbroking—or lending money on portable security—is one of the world's oldest professions. It can be traced back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire in the West and to China three thousand years ago in the East.

Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi remembers he got the idea to change his family's dry goods store into a pawn shop during WWII:

"Our sergeant would lend the guys five bucks on their watches, their service watches, and when they got paid two weeks later, they'd pay him back ten dollars. I said, ‘That's a hell of a deal. I want in on that deal.'"

Josephs recalls one of the more bizarre stories that came out of the shop:

"The one in which a guy walked in and said, ‘I want to borrow five bucks on my eye.' Had a prosthetic eye. Pulled it out of his head. He had gotten it in the service. He says, ‘I want five dollars; I need a—need a bottle of wine.' I loaned him five dollars on the wine. Some people came in later—he never did come back. People came in later and said, What's the strangest thing you ever took in? I pull out the box with the eye in it. I said, ‘Here,' and showed them the prosthetic eye, which was a beautiful brown eye with veins running through it. So we had some farmers come in and they had seen the eye, and they were looking for a wedding set. I told them, I say, if they bought the wedding set, I'd give them the eye. So sure enough they bought a wedding set, I gave them the eye, and that was the last of that."

Robert Cogswell of Austin explains a problem he had in the 1970s:

"I had this sophisticated instrument, but I was not a sophisticated guitar player. And I worried about my guitar. It was such a nice instrument that I didn't want it to get stolen. So I carried it with me a lot of the time, even when I was riding bicycles, and I was worried about it getting smashed or broken or damaged. It was an unhealthy relationship for a person who was already married. It was like I had this guitar on the side."

Cogswell describes finding a $15 answer to his dilemma hanging in a pawn shop:

"This Gretsch was made of something like three-eighths-inch plywood. It didn't pick up sound very well. In other words, it's a very quiet guitar, which is perfect for a person who can't play well."

He relates how he was a bit apprehensive at first to purchase it:

"I said, ‘This guitar is not the way it was when it was built. It's much better. The person who owned it really loved it because it's worn at this point, and it's worn at that point, and he has adjusted the nut and he's adjusted the strings so that they fit this guitar right. So that person loves this guitar, and I don't want to buy it out from under that person, if he's coming back to get it.' And he said, ‘No, you can buy this one. The guy who left that guitar has pawned it here five times. And he brought it in this time and said, "Okay, you can sell it this time because I'm taking this money straight to the bus station, and I'm going back home to Kentucky."'"

The recent economic slump has boosted business for pawn shops and has led to the appearance of online pawnbrokers. The industry has also been aided by popular TV shows like Pawn Stars.

Robert Cogswell found a guitar perfectly suited for his needs at a pawn shop.

Hear memories of pawn shop transactions, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Pawn Shops
(03:37 )

Original Airdate: December 18 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

When it comes to the Christmas holidays, most Americans plan on spending time with loved ones, enjoying the break from classes, maybe getting some time off from work. But for those serving in the military, Christmas is business as usual.

Frank Curre of Waco was aboard the USS Tennessee when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He remembers when the Tennessee was finally able to get under way two weeks later:

"We had our first Christmas at sea, and they took wrappers off of turkeys marked ‘World War I,' but they was good turkeys. Starting with Christmas at sea, 1941, I spent Christmas at sea in the Pacific, aboard ship, '41, '42, '43, and '44, never ashore. (cat meowing) And the war was over in '45, and I was ashore then."

The Christmas season of 1944 found Fred Nowak of Bremond in a foxhole in Western Europe. His unit had landed at Normandy Beach that summer and, by year's end, was involved in the Battle of the Bulge:

"We were getting some mail come in to the foxhole, reading the mails. And I had a new guy, he just came in from the state of Texas to join me. There were two of us to a foxhole. I said, ‘I see you're new down here.' I said. ‘You seen any combat?' He said, ‘I don't know nothing much about it.' I said, ‘Well, don't be a hero now.' I said, ‘Just do your job the best you can, but don't try to be a hero.'"

Nowak explains that his advice to the new guy fell on deaf ears:

"Christmas Eve morning, the sergeant come over there and he said—he said, ‘Y'all see that house over there?' Yep. ‘You see that bunker down there?' Said yeah. Hunkered down.(??) He says, ‘Germans got their machine guns in there, and they're picking our guys off.' So he says, ‘We're going to go, but who wants to volunteer to be the leader?' to go in first, you know. Well, that guy right away jumped up, reached his hand up: ‘I'll be the first one.' So we started down there and got pretty close to it. And then all of a sudden machine guns open up fire and just split that guy's stomach. So we was going to put them out, and I got hit to my knee. Got a Purple Heart for that. And we got them—we got the Germans out of there."

George McDowell of Houston graduated from West Point in 1937 and served in the military until 1961. One of his last jobs before retirement was overseeing the installation in England of the Thor Missile Force, which pointed toward the Soviet Union. McDowell recalls what happened a few days before Christmas of 1960:

"This sergeant came into my office, and he says, ‘Colonel,' he says, ‘I have just discovered that these bombs on the nose of these can be sabotaged where they won't go off.' I said, ‘What the hell you talking about?' He said, ‘Let me show you the diagrams.' He showed me. I said, ‘Let's go in and talk to General [William H.] Blanchard.' We showed him that. He picks the phone up and calls General [Curtis] LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command, and said, ‘I think we need a team out of Sandia Base out here—right down over here just as fast as we can get it,' see, which they did. We just blew their Christmas to hell. About twelve people came over. And sure enough, they found something in the thing that could have been tampered with, see."

While enjoying the wonders and joys of the Christmas season, let's keep those serving our country, both at home and abroad, in our thoughts and prayers.

A US soldier in a foxhole at the Battle of the Bulge.

Hear three veterans talk about working on Christmas, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Christmas in the Military
(03:44 )

Original Airdate: December 25 (2012)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

For many of us, Christmas memories from our youth bring about an instant smile, as we remember loved ones and a time when life seemed simpler.

Carol Duron recalls Christmastime during her childhood in the Calle Dos neighborhood of Waco:

"We always had a nativity scene in the hallway. They were about—I would say about a foot to two feet high, you know. And we'd have the whole la levantada(??), when the three kings. Christmas Eve, we would always go to midnight Mass at Saint Francis, which was a block away from us, you know. Come home, open our presents. That was the way we used to do it, which we thought was great. We didn't have to wait till the next day. (laughter)"

Bernardine Kubiak of Bremond describes a tradition brought over from Poland:

"The turońja, or they called it the Christmas goat. And they would get neighboring men that would come—three or four would come. And they would have this sheet. And they'd be covered with this sheet, and they'd walk up to the houses at night. And when the goat would open his mouth it was like blood red, and you would have to hand them a jigger of whiskey."

Madelyn O'Brien grew up on a farm in Washington County and recounts a favorite memory:

"Unbeknownst to me, my dad had talked to our neighbor who's Polish, and he dressed up as Santa Claus and he came to our house Christmas Eve night. We were so excited to finally see Santa. And he danced around our living room and sung. I mean, it was just such a festive time, and then he gave each one of us our gift that night. And I got a doll that I just loved."

Waco native Lee Lockwood describes his family's Christmas Eve tradition:

"And Mother made quite a to-do over that. For a Christmas tree we would go out and cut our own tree, a cedar, and we didn't have to go far. They were all around Waco. And then we'd bring it in and put it up. And she'd get a lot of berries and trees and mistletoe and decorate the whole house. And on the tree, why, we'd always string the popcorn. It was for decorations. And then there were berries, red berries that we would string. And we had nothing in the beginning but the candle lights, Christmas tree lights. It was very—very, I thought, effective, and the smell of the cedar and the actual burning lights."

Reared in Gillespie County, Ora Ann Knopp remembers the excitement of Christmas Eve, when the decorations went up:

"Before it was time to go look at the Christmas tree somebody went outside and used the fishing cane or pole or something and hit on the roof: 'That's Santa Claus coming!' Boy, we sat there and we was ready for Santa Claus."

This Christmas, start a new tradition with loved ones of sharing favorite holiday memories.

Lockwood remembers that his mother made Christmas tree garland with popcorn and berries

Hear favorite childhood Christmas memories, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Christmas Memories and Traditions
(03:29 )

Original Airdate: January 1 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Each New Year brings the feeling of a clean slate and unlimited possibilities. It's a time ripe for traditions and adventures.

Evelyn Kordzik of Gillespie County recalls a tradition that needed some tweaking:

"I never will forget after I got married - of course, you know, we always enjoyed New Year's Eve. Always had a good time New Year's Eve. Sure enough, January the first, the morning the phone would ring. My dad would call, 'Well, I think it'd be a good day to butcher a hog today. Don't you think so?' (laughter) 'Well, okay.' It went on for a couple of years like that. Finally, I told my dad, I said, 'Now, wait a minute. Let's not do it on January the first anymore. Let's just wait a couple of days.'"

Waco native Carol Durón remembers how her family welcomed the New Year:

"In those days, it was okay. My daddy would stand outside, you know, and fire his pistol, you know. And I used to ask my daddy, I said, 'Daddy, what happens when - the New Year and whatever?' 'Well,' he said, (laughs) 'you stand out there, and when you know it's twelve midnight, you shoot.' And I said, 'Yeah, but what happens?' He said, 'Well, everything's at a standstill. And then the wind shifts, and then it shifts the other way.' (laughter)"

Mary Sendón of Waco explains a tasty tradition she looked forward to in her youth:

"In Italian the word for chickpea is ciceri. They're wonderful. You know, we always had those on New Year's Eve. My mother would boil them and salt them a little bit, and they'd dry out, you know, and we ate them - ate them like popcorn. And that was a New Year's Eve delicacy."

Later, Mary and her husband, Dr. Andres Sendón, loved to go on road trips together and had quite an adventure one New Year's Eve. She describes getting lost in Dallas on their way home:

"And we got down in the railroad tracks at the awfullest dives down there, and we knew we were in the wrong place. And I - we were getting a little bit uneasy. And I saw a police car parked over by the railroad track, and I said, 'Stop the car by that policeman. I'm going to ask him.' And we asked him if he could tell us how to get back on the road to Waco. He said, 'Follow me,' and he got in his car, took us out to the road as far as where we found the sign that says to Waco. And he motioned for us to stop a minute. He got out of the car, and he said, 'Now, there's your sign. You all be careful. This is New Year's Eve. You know, there's going to be a lot of crazy people on the road.' Well, sure enough, there were some, but didn't bother us. But while the car - the lights of the dashboard were on his badge, and I memorized his badge number. And when I got home I wrote a letter to the police department commending this man for his kindness. He was; he just went all out of his way. Well, I got a letter back from the chief of police in Dallas thanking me for that letter. He said, 'This was a wonderful letter of recommendation.' He said, 'I have put it in his file, but I let him read it.'"

The helpful officer's name was the same as that of the officer who was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald after the assassination of President Kennedy, and Sendón always wondered if the officers were one and the same.

Although a holiday, New Year's can be bittersweet, as it's situated toward the end of the Christmas season and brings many of us to reflect on the ups and downs of the previous year. But here's to the new year. May it bring laughter and understanding to us all.

Mary Sendon's family rang in the New Year with an Italian chickpea recipe.

Hear various acknowledgements of the New Year, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

New Year Traditions and Adventures
(03:45 )

Original Airdate: January 8 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Baylor Round Table began in 1904 in Burleson Hall with seven founding members and quickly earned the reputation for being the club for female faculty and faculty wives to join. The club offered an environment for members to get to know better one another, Baylor, and their world.

Mary McCall of Dallas became the youngest member of Round Table in the fall of 1937, when she joined as a sophomore. She had recently married Baylor graduate and athlete Lloyd Russell, who was starting in a faculty position that fall. McCall shares her earliest memories of the club:

"You wore gloves and a hat to every meeting. It was a very formal organization at that time as far as meetings went. Strictly business until the social hour, and then they were as relaxed and enjoyed each other as much as any group could."

McCall explains the educational emphasis of Round Table:

"Programs were taken very seriously. It was an opportunity for those Baylor women to keep in touch with what was going on in the world. And they were chosen carefully, and Round Table women were asked to do the programs. And that was just expected that sooner or later you'd be required to present a paper."

Mary Sendón of Waco was also the youngest member of Round Table when she joined in the fall of 1922, after graduating from Baylor and marrying Andres Sendón, a professor in the Spanish department. She recalls the challenge of putting together presentations:

"I was on the program I don't know how many—you know, I looked at those yearbooks and I saw the topics. I said, ‘How did I do that? I don't even know what that topic was all about,' but I did it. And all the ladies did the same thing. They all had to go and do a lot of research and do—it was a lecture, and it was always on deep stuff, you know, like the Renaissance. It was pretty—something you had to do a little work on or you couldn't give a decent program."

Round Table members weren't the only ones on the program, as Sendón explains:

"I made my husband take my place one time because I had something else to do. I was teaching or something. But he was on I don't know how many times. Mr. Sparkman was on. Dr. Armstrong was on. All the faculty members had their turn in those—all those—through those years."

Sendón shares a funny story from a Round Table anniversary celebration, to which husbands and other male guests were invited. The story involves Enid Markham, author of the current lyrics to "That Good Old Baylor Line."

"Enid was reading her poetry, and she was talking about her courtship with Bob Markham. And she read and she read, and she had to turn a page. In the meantime, Dr. Hawkins was sitting close to us, next to us, and he was going to sleep. And Mrs. Hawkins kept touching him on the wrist to wake him up. My husband thought that Enid was through because she turned the page and paused, and he started clapping. Well, everybody else started clapping. The clapping scared Dr. Hawkins. He fell off the chair, right down on the floor. Well, sure enough, it didn't bother Enid one bit. She just started right on reading some more poetry."

Today, the Baylor Round Table is approximately 300 members strong and meets during the academic year. Since the 1970s, the organization has given a scholarship each year to a Baylor student. Mary McCall was instrumental in the formation of the scholarship.

Members in the early years

Hear two former members reminisce, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Baylor Round Table
(03:44 )

Original Airdate: January 15 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Most of us have heard someone say, "When I was young, I had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get to school." The statement illustrates how easy they think the younger generations have it, but it also points to how much Americans value education and the many ways students have made it to and from schools over the years.

Margaret McLean grew up on the Stoner Ranch in Uvalde County and describes how she and her two brothers got an education in the 1920s and 30s:

"It was five miles from our house to Laguna where the school was that we would go to. But it was so far and so hard for Dad to take us every morning, come get us in the afternoon, that he got a tent, built a frame for it with a floor to sit on, and moved us down so that we were just right next door to the school. And Mama would stay down with us during the week from Monday through Friday. Daddy would take us down on Monday morning and come get us Friday afternoon. So that was the way we went to school for four years.

"And when I was twelve years old, Daddy decided I was old enough to drive the car, so I began driving the old Model T Ford from the ranch to school. And I would pick up the neighbor children across the river from us, and they would ride with us to school. So it helped them too. It was quite a chore for me because they were all boys―my brothers and the others were all boys too—and they just tormented me to death. (laughs)"

Interviewer: "I can imagine."

Argie Medearis walked to A. J. Moore High School in Waco in the 20s and 30s, when the campus taught grades one through twelve. She remembers that some students took a dangerous route, to the dismay of the principal:

"One of the bridges that cross the river, what, the train bridge: they called it the trestle. Well, some of the boys would—for a shortcut to get to Moore High, they would get on that trestle. And we—we're—no one's supposed [to] do that. And Mr. Wilson had these spyglasses. He could stand in his office, and he could see them come across there, you know, on that bridge. And when everybody get to school, after a while the intercom would come on. And he'd call, ‘So-and-so, come to the office, please. James, come to the office, please.' And we knew what was happening. He'd seen them crossing that trestle. (laughs) And he had a paddle, and he'd paddle them good."

Marcus Maurer recalls attending a country school, which was about five miles from his home, in Gillespie County in the 30s and 40s:

"My sister and I rode a donkey. My brother and the older sister, they rode a horse. But then on Thanksgiving Day, which really was thankful, in a way, the donkey died, so we had to walk to the Y and catch a ride with the teacher. Later on in years he had a girlfriend on the north side [of] the school, and he wasn't going that way on a Friday sometimes. Not every Friday, but sometimes he went to his girlfriend['s], and he said, ‘Well, you kids, you have to walk the whole way now.'"

Maybe one day in the future, going to school will look like something out of The Jetsons. But for now, we have a variety of contraptions on wheels and also good old-fashioned walking to do the job.

The means of transportation for a while for Marcus Maurer and his sister.

Listen to adventure-filled memories of making it to school, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Getting to School
(03:42 )

Airdate: January 22

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

During cold weather, most people want to huddle inside around heat sources, but some jobs force people to brave the elements.

Waco businessman and historian Roger Conger delivered groceries for J. C. Crippen & Sons as a teenager in the 1920s. He recalls a winter delivery to Waco High English teacher Marie Leslie that can only be described as a learning experience:

"Her house was on the west side of North Eighteenth Street right across from Providence Hospital. And I pulled across the street to the wrong side of the street, it was. In other words, I was heading north, and it's a steep, downward hill there. And I pulled against the curb, and there was ice on the curbs that particular Saturday. Was a cold, cold day. I left my engine running, and I pulled the combination clutch release and brake of a Model T, which is to your left hand. I pulled that up and thought that I had locked the brakes. Left the engine running, went around to the back, got her order off, and went inside Miss Leslie's house and delivered her groceries. And when I came back out of her house, to my consternation, I couldn't see any truck. I hurried out to the curb, and I looked down the hill, and there was a filling station at the foot of the hill down there, and I saw a crowd of people around in this gasoline station. And with my box in my hand I ran down the hill and found that my truck, still loaded with Crippen groceries, had careened down this icy hill into that filling station, crashed into the back of an automobile that was getting some gasoline in it, and had thrown my load of groceries all over that end of Waco. (laughter)"

Fortunately, both the driver of the vehicle and Mr. Crippen were very understanding.

In the late thirties, George McDowell of Houston, a recent West Point graduate, was stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma with the 18th Field Artillery, a horse-drawn regiment. One of his assignments concerned a horse-drawn unit at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, the 12th Field Artillery, which was becoming motorized and had equipment and horses it no longer needed:

"Our battery was designated to drive down from Fort Sill to Fort Sam Houston, pick up 246 horses, 8 guns, and 16 wagons and march them overland back to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, right in the dead of winter. When we got down to Fort Sam Houston, we found out that half of these horses we were going to take back had never been in draft pulling a gun or wagon or anything. So after we left Fort Sam Houston, we—first day, we only made about sixteen miles; the next time, about twenty-four. And we were hitting about thirty to thirty-two miles a day. But we'd try to bivouac by three o'clock in the afternoon. But then it got below freezing at times, and we weren't sleeping worth a damn. And you didn't have sleeping bags in those days. You just wrapped up in blankets and other things like that and did the best you could. The horses were not taking that cold weather. So every morning we'd have a—almost a rodeo getting hitched up. It was dark, and daylight didn't come till about seven o'clock. And so that march taught me, I said, ‘Well, I sure don't want to go to war with horses.' (laughs)"

Shortly after this operation, McDowell was transferred to the army air corps as an ordnance officer and served in North Africa, Italy, and the Pentagon in World War II.

During a wintertime assignment, George McDowell saw firsthand the challenges of using horses in combat.

Listen to chilly work adventures, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

On-the-Job Cold Weather Stories
(03:47 )

Airdate: April 9

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

As the war in Europe was winding down in the spring of 1945, exhausted troops probably thought they were immune to being shocked. But knowledge of the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps was on the horizon. Nothing could have prepared them for that.

Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi served in Intelligence & Reconnaissance during the war and recalls checking out reports of a concentration camp near the town of Dachau in late April of '45:

"We got there, and the first thing we saw was a sign over the entrance which says, Work Will Make You Free, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei.' We went through the gate, and we shot a few Germans. They were escaping. I looked at the—at the prisoners in their striped garb, so filthy and decimated. One of them moved. And I went over to him, and he said, ‘Bist a Yid?' Are you Jewish? I said, ‘Ich bin a Yid.' I am Jewish. And then I told him, ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' I speak a little Yiddish. ‘Alles geet. Alles geet.' All is good. All is good. And I opened my C ration and fed him a little soup. And I asked him what his name was. He said, ‘Meine namen ist Herman.' ‘Ich.' My name is Herman, too. He died two hours later in my arms."

Wilson Canafax of Fort Worth was a member of the 1110th Engineer Combat Group and heard about the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after it was liberated. He decided to go see what it was and describes encountering a former inmate:

"Before I got to the front entrance, there was a young fellow, came up to me speaking perfect English. And he said, ‘I see you have a cross on your lapel. Are you a chaplain?' I said yes. He said, ‘Think you could do us a favor?' I said, ‘Well, I can try.' It turned out that this person talking to me was the young fellow Eliezer Wiesel, who's known better today as Elie Wiesel. And he said, ‘I'd like to take you through some parts of the camp here.' Went through the main entrance, and as you've heard the expression ‘dead men walking,' that's the way the people looked. I went to several of them, some who could speak English, and I'd talk a little bit with them."

Canafax explains he also led Jewish worship services, which was the second request of the young man:

"So many of them had—wanted nothing to do with religion, but those who were genuine in their faith and there was the opportunity to come to a worship service, they came. We got our carryalls, those big trucks, and put the people who could be carried in those things to a place where we could have a worship service. They had to be lifted on. They had to be carried on, crying. They never thought they'd be alive. And we had some little prayer books that were distributed among those that wanted them. And on one side of it was Hebrew, Hebrew prayers. The other side was English. So as they went through the service in Hebrew, then I could follow along in English itself. They cried. They shouted. When they got through, they just raising hands, sort of like our Pentecostals today raise their—they were just raising their hands in joy."

When the Nazi camps were liberated in Europe, Americans were encouraged to visit them, creating thousands of witnesses to this dark chapter of history.

This edition of Living Stories was made possible by a grant from the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission to the Institute for Oral History.

Josephs recalls the first time he entered the infamous gate into Dachau Concentration Camp.

Hear memories of American eyewitnesses to the horrors of WWII Nazi camps, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps
(04:02 )

Airdate: April 16

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Numerous expressions exist about how much the devil loves to take advantage of the idle hands and minds of mortals. But while some people find trouble in their free time, or simply waste it, others use it in positive ways.

Frank Curre of Waco ended up with some downtime in June of 1945, when the escort carrier he was serving on was sent to the docks at San Francisco because of engine trouble. While the carrier was being overhauled, Curre took a step that would last forty-nine years:

"And I was standing on the fantail one day, and the skipper come down. We got to talking, and while we was talking, I said, ‘Man, I wish I could go do something I'd like to do.' He said, ‘What is it you'd like to do?' I said, ‘Well, I wouldn't do it earlier, but,' I said, ‘I'd like to go home and get married.' He said, ‘How you know she'll marry you?' I said, ‘Well, about three months ago I mailed her a letter and told her I didn't know when I'd get home, and it's a possibility I may not make it home. But if I get home again, we're getting married.' And I said, ‘I ain't had a negative reply yet, and I've received lots of letters.' So he give me—says, ‘Go up and tell the yeoman give you a ten-day emergency leave home.' Said, ‘You're going to have to fly.' So I flew home, we got married, and I took her back to San Francisco with us."

Madison Cooper Jr. used his spare time to knock everyone's socks off in Waco, as Mary McCall of Dallas explains:

"For years, in secret, he wrote a novel, a two-volume novel called Sironia, and, of course, a lot of people in Waco thought they recognized Waco (laughs) residents. He told me that it was strictly fictional. Well, I doubt that. I think writers probably write what they know about. And it became a best-seller. And, oh, he went to New York; he was interviewed. He really had a wonderful, exciting experience. And all of it was for the purpose of putting more money into his Cooper Foundation."

Baptist missionary John David Hopper, from the Baton Rouge area, served in Eastern Europe for nineteen years and learned multiple languages in order to talk with locals. Hopper recalls that, in his free time, he studied Esperanto, an international language created in the late 1800s to make communication possible between people who had no other language in common:

"I thought that's a great idea, so I became a member of the Esperanto Club. I met the Esperantists in Vienna and in Budapest and down in Bulgaria, and I had [a] good time. They always are friendly because you come in and you speak Esperanto with them, and they'll take you and show you their city. They'll invite you in their home. They have a meal. And I began to make Christian contacts as well.

"And I'm a radio amateur. I had my radio amateur's license in Vienna. So on Sunday afternoons their Esperanto group was on there from all over Europe and from South America, if the conditions were right. And we just talked to each other for an hour, an hour and a half, and knew each other by our first names, all in Esperanto.

"So that was just a fun thing. That wasn't serious. It was just a fun thing. And I still have my books, in literature and some world literature, all of it in Esperanto. I have an Esperanto Bible that I keep. And every once in a while, I'll pull it down and read a Psalm or read, you know, passage from that."

When—or if—free time presents itself, we should all consider doing something that will change the future for the better.

L. L. Zamenhof, creator of the Esperanto language.

Hear stories of how people decided to use their extra time, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Free Time
(03:50 )

Original Airdate: April 23 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

During WWI in Waco, the puttering, sputtering sounds of biplanes filled the skies. The area around today's Extraco Events Center had been converted into an airfield to serve as a military training facility, and by the time the war ended, Rich Field had graduated some 400 flyers, many of whom served in France.

Lee Lockwood, the son of a Waco banker, remembers how the financial community, knowing the training center would be good for Waco, offered its support:

"The field could not be obtained without having railroad facilities. It was a long distance from the main line—railroad line. But arrangements were shortly made to buy the necessary property. And a spur track was run from the Cotton Belt railroad through what is now known as New Road and went on forward through to Camp MacArthur. After the war the railroad was abolished and New Road was opened which we used quite often in the city."

Lockwood explains that the field provided ample free entertainment:

"Aviation at that particular period of time was rather new. And we did go out quite often to watch the maneuvers and the training going on at that time."

The amusements of Rich Field extended to other counties as well, as Bobby Joe Fulwiler of Waco describes:

"There was one, had engine problems and landed at Calvert. And, of course, everybody in Calvert ran down to see the airplane. It was just marvelous to see an airplane on the ground."

After WWI, Rich Field was turned over to the city and became a municipal airport. In a 1988 interview, Jack Flanders of Waco recalls how the airport allowed him to fulfill a dream during his student days at Baylor:

"Christmastime, late '40, I told my dad they had a Civilian Pilot Training Program that I'd just give anything if I could take. I just wanted to fly. I always loved the air. Well, he came up with the money, fifty bucks, which included about fifty hours of flying, plus ground school. Ran across larger part of the semester, and we'd go out to what is now called Richfield High School. Well, it was Rich (pauses) Field. And the old office area is in what's the Lion's Den now. I learned to fly out there, [took] ground school on campus, and got my wings in the spring of '41."

Two years later, Flanders entered the army air corps and flew 51 missions over Germany.

The municipal airport at Rich Field closed a few years after WWII, as it was no longer able to accommodate the newest commercial planes. The Heart of Texas Coliseum, now Extraco Events Center, was built in the early fifties, and Richfield High School, now Waco High, opened in 1961.

A Curtiss JN-4 stationed
at Rich Field in 1918.

Hear Central Texans' memories of a WWI airfield, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Rich Field
(03:45 )

Original Airdate: April 30 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

First jobs can be exciting, as we get a taste of independence and feel the thrill of being rewarded for our efforts. They also build our confidence and teach us important lessons about responsibility and managing money.

Hannibal Jaworski, known for years as "Doctor Joe" in Waco, grew up in Guadalupe County in the early 1900s. For a while in his youth, he worked every Saturday at a local grocery store:

"I would get up early and ride this little donkey approximately four miles to Geronimo, Texas. I'd go to work and work all day doing everything I could, that I was told to do: sweeping, sacking potatoes, sacking other things, cleaning up, carrying things out for people. And in the—late in the evening when the last gin was baled at the cotton gin there, the only cotton gin in Geronimo, they would blow the whistle, and it was our sign for us to close up because that was the last bale and generally we knew that we wouldn't see any more customers. So we closed the doors, and I had to sweep up, clean up everything, stack up everything I could. And I got my two quarters, and I rode home on this little burro, holding the two quarters in my hand because I was so scared I would lose it if I put it in my pocket. (interviewer laughs) I'd get home around ten, ten thirty, eleven o'clock. Everybody was sound asleep. Of course, the doors were open. I would slip in bed, be sure that my quarters were still there. And that was my biggest business adventure."

Louie Mayberry of Goliad remembers that one of his first workplaces was the International-Great Northern Railroad station in San Antonio, during WWI:

"The main train they had was the Sunshine Special, and I would hear the redcaps call those names, ‘All aboard for New Braunfels, San Marcos, Austin, Taylor, Rockdale, Llano, Valley Junction.' He could name all the way into St. Louis, I believe. And I shined shoes there, and I finally bought a red cap so I could make a few dimes helping the people with their luggage. I was just an eleven-year-old boy. (laughs)"

Wilma Buntin of Waco explains how she was able to pursue a passion while attending Houston Junior College in the 1920s:

"I loved horses. They had a horseback riding program. Every free minute I'd be down looking over the fence watching the people going out on their horseback rides. The teacher who taught it was very very—human person. She realized I couldn't afford to pay for horseback riding lessons, so one day she called me in and said, ‘Wilma, would you like to take horseback riding?' I said, ‘I would, but, Branch, I just can't afford it.' She said, ‘Oh yes, you can.' She said, ‘I need somebody'—and I know she made the job for me—‘to wash out the cans that the horses' food is put into. Then I need someone I can trust to know the horses, give them just exactly the amount that they need because if fed too much they get foundered.' And foundering means their feet swell up, they have fever, and all that, and many times if they're foundered too badly you've lost a good horse."

No matter what those first jobs are, they help us to discover talents, develop skills, and recognize what we can offer the workplace at large.

The IGN station in 1967, when it was part of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. (Photo by Bill Roberts)

Listen to stories of early employment, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

First Jobs
(03:51 )

Airdate: May 7

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Mothers make the world go round and wear many hats for their children: that of doctor, teacher, cheerleader, chauffer, chef, therapist, maid, and the list goes on. They're so wonderful that they have their very own holiday, and it's the perfect day for us to reminisce about special times with our moms.

Wilma Buntin grew up in the Houston area and recalls helping her mother with wash day every Monday—in the era of rub boards, washtubs, and washpots:

"We'd get out there under two big old cottonwood trees and then along toward the house was a fig tree. And my mother and I would begin singing hymns out there, and we had a mockingbird. And that mockingbird [would] come sit on a telephone post. And when we got going good, he'd flop his wings and he'd just go right straight up singing and then he'd come back down. And he'd get a breath. And he'd go right up. And we used to just sing just to see how long he would—(laughter). But that helped make our morning go fast. And some of those chores that today would really seem like work, well, with our singing—and my mother had a knack of having [a] good time when she worked. And she taught us that. So when work comes to me, I just tie right into it and decide to have a good time while I'm doing it."

Madelyn O'Brien of San Antonio recounts a favorite memory from her youth on a Washington County farm:

"In the fall my mother would bring the incubator into the dining room where we hatched our own chickens. So we'd take eggs, and she would let me turn the crank that rotated the eggs so that they were evenly heated. And when they began to—to make the first pecking, you know, to release themselves from the shell, she would come and get me and we'd watch in amazement, and that was a real treat for me."

Avery Downing, former superintendent of Waco ISD, was reared in Harrison County and remembers his mother's interest in his education:

"In grade school, and also in high school, many mornings she would be on the back porch shelling peas or churning or doing something. And she'd call to me to see if I was ready to go to school, see how I was dressed. And then she would say, ‘Now, let's—let's do this spelling.' And she'd take the speller, lay it on her lap, and churn with a—a dash, and check me out on that spelling. The same way with the arithmetic assignment or any other assignment that she had reason to believe I needed a little last-minute coaching. And she knew at all times where I stood on my assignments."

When Tom Charlton, first director of the Institute for Oral History, decided during his sophomore year at Baylor to pursue a career in history rather than medicine, his father was not thrilled. But his was not the only opinion that mattered, as Charlton explains:

"My mother was a very sweet, very supportive person who said that she—she was proud of me no matter what I did. And so I had the assurance that my mother would still cook those good Cajun gumbo dinners for me and all those things that I had grown up with no matter what I studied in college and what I did with my life."

To all the moms out there, thank you, and we love you.

Wilma Buntin shares what she learned from her mother while washing clothes.

Hear stories about moms, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Mothers
(03:52 )

Airdate: May 14

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Spring is a glorious, refreshing time of the year when we break out the short sleeves, start spending more time outdoors, and look forward to the end of the school year.

Loyd Robb, retired Salvation Army colonel, reminisces about a game he played during his youth in Dallas:

"Trinity River overflowed every spring at that time. And you had the viaduct that went over the Trinity River bottom, they called it. It was quite an ornate bridge, as I remember. It had these curved sections, you know, that came up like an inverted u. And when the water was flooding, we used to love to stand out there and watch the debris go down the river. On one side of the bridge we'd watch a big piece of a trunk of a tree come, and then we'd run over to watch it come out the other side and—and try to time it of how long it would be. Sometimes it didn't come out, so we—(laughs) we wondered what happened to it."

Eb Morrow recalls a springtime tradition he taught in the 1950s, beginning at South Waco Elementary:

"I asked Weldon Teague, our principal, I said, ‘What class does the—does the maypole?' He said, ‘Oh, we used to do that, but we stopped.' I said, ‘We're going to start it again.' So the whole time that I taught, the two—two years down there and the three years at Provident Heights, we did the maypole dance. And, I mean, you know, it was just—it was just part of growing up, and the children remember it. And then if they didn't move—if they didn't move fast enough, I had a yardstick in my hand. I'd pop them on the legs, (laughs) and they would get up and move. Yeah, ‘Pick up your legs. Pick up your feet.' And I remembered that from old Mr. Arbuckle. (laughs) So it was a lot of fun to remember things like that."

Orlando Arbuckle had been the principal at Columbus Avenue Elementary, where Morrow attended second grade.

Baylor graduate Mary Sendón, whose husband Andrés taught at Baylor for more than 50 years, recalls May Day, which was the precursor to Diadeloso:

"And the big thing on May Day was that the senior class played the faculty in baseball. Well, somehow my husband always got to be the captain of the baseball team, and he had to pick all of the men. But he'd get so mad at some of them who didn't want to participate, didn't want to participate. So he made them get uniforms. You put on baseball uniforms and everything. And I have a picture; I'm going to find that picture and show it to you. It's Dr. C. D. Johnson, Dr. Bragg, and several of the men were sitting on the bench waiting to be called and Sendón is out in the field pitching. And somebody else was at the other end of the field, and there was old John Strecker with his bucket of water. He was the water boy.

"When the game was over, they made all of the participants come up and take a bow. And they had funny names for all of the players, you know. They had—had them nicknamed crazy names. And then they'd have a donkey out there, and the president had to ride the donkey. Miss Stretch used to ride it all the time. She was in education, but she didn't care."

In Texas, some years it feels like Mother Nature doesn't get the memo and skips the springtime weather altogether, but we celebrate the season nonetheless. Texans know to treasure and take advantage of spring temperatures when we get them.

Oak Cliff Viaduct, now the Houston Street Viaduct, spanning the Trinity River in Dallas.

Hear memories of spring events, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Springtime Activities
(03:49 )

Airdate: May 21 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Before automobiles filled the roads of America, personal transportation often consisted of buggies and wagons pulled by horses and mules. One of the hazards of this form of transportation was that, on top of trying to avoid driver error, you had to contend with the animals' behavior as well.

Lifelong Waco resident Mary Sendón recounts a family adventure, courtesy of their horse:

"My mother would go to town when my grandfather had his barbershop. She would hitch up the horse and—and buggy, and she'd go downtown, pick my grandfather up to bring him home to lunch and then she'd take him back again. Well, one day, she took him back to work, and she started up Austin Avenue. And she dropped the lines, and the horse started running. Well, somebody on the street saw it and called my grandfather right quick—ran for my grandfather—said, "Your daughter's running—the horse is running away with her." He got in somebody else's buggy and started up—(laughs) followed the track to see which way that horse was going. Do you know, that horse was so well-trained it turned the corner at Eighth and Austin, turned the corner at Webster, and went into the back alley. And the barn door was still open, and it just went right into the barn and stopped. (interviewer laughs) And when my grandfather came home, there was that horse and buggy standing still waiting."

Avery Downing of Waco recalls traveling by buggy during his youth in Northeast Texas:

"And I would sit on the back and let my feet drag in the dust and dirt going down the road, and how interesting that was to see the road unfold backwards in front of me. And there were some—on some of these bigger creeks and streams, the bridges [would] be kind of shaky. And the horse or the mule, whichever one, sometimes they would be skittish, and they would have to be controlled considerably to get across this bridge without a problem."

In Calvert, Bobby Joe Fulwiler's family had one of the first automobiles in town, a Stoddard-Dayton. He describes how these early motorcars could wreak havoc:

"You drive down the road, and people would see you coming. They'd—they'd hop out of the wagon or buggy and run around and hold the horse's head while you went by because the horse would run away—get scared and run away if that automobile went by."

But there were, of course, advantages to having smart animals at the helm. Benny Martinez of Goliad remembers what his father did on occasion during the ride home from town in the family wagon:

"Mama would say, ‘There comes your daddy.' We could see him from way—way far because it was prairie. And my daddy would be asleep in the back. The mules would be by themselves, you know. So they'd come up there and pull right in front of the house. ‘Placido, wake up!' My father would get up. He wasn't drunk."

Although the horseless carriage was seen at first as a fad, its adoption proved unstoppable, and in the early 1910s motorcars began to outnumber buggies. Buggies and wagons continued to be used for the next two decades, especially in rural areas. Today, some faith groups such as the Amish still rely on them, but these modes of transportation are mostly synonymous with the past.

Taking care of business, buggy-style.

Hear stories about transportation in the early 20th century, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Buggies and Wagons
(03:48 )

Original Airdate: June 4 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

One of the best ways to see the vast expanses of America is on a road trip, where you can set your own pace and schedule.

Gladys Jenkins Casimir of Calvert took a road trip in 1933 with her sister and a friend to visit an acquaintance living in New York. This was quite an undertaking for three single females in that time period, as Casimir describes:

"Can you imagine us driving on unpaved roads so many times? Went through Philadelphia and we got stopped by the police there for driving too slow. (laughs) But we were hunting for the home of Betsy Ross. You know, we looked at all—we went through Baltimore and there was the narrowest streets I ever saw. But we got finally to the New Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel, and my friend in New York City had come over there to meet us and drove us through the tunnel. And we did sightseeing around the city for nearly a week. We rode those double-decker buses. We rode the subway. We went way out to Coney Island one night and rode all the things. Then we went to Albany and then across New York State and went to Niagara Falls. We were planning to go on the Canadian side to Detroit, but we met some people that had come that way, and they advised us not to go on the Canadian side alone since there was no man with us."

So, instead, the girls headed to Chicago, which was hosting the World's Fair that year, named Century of Progress:

"And we stayed there four days and took in all the sites and exhibits and things. And then we came back through St. Louis, and knowing that that‘s where they had the world fair in 1904, we looked the city over. And then we came on back, gradually, home again."

In May 1972, Andrés Sendón retired from Baylor, after teaching Spanish there for more than fifty years. That summer, he and wife Mary traveled up into the eastern part of the United States, and even briefly into Canada, to see the sights, celebrate his retirement, and visit their daughters:

"We didn't take the high road, we took the low roads. (laughs) We would scoot off into the access roads and find some of the most interesting places. We would visit little country stores. One old man that had a country store and he had all sorts of antiques in it. And there was one—another place in Oklahoma that made such delicious candy, but it was only advertised on the road, and we had to find that little old place to get to it. But we found a lot of things that reflected old America, old United States, the old days because they were not on the main road.

"And I always remember going through Arkansas. (laughs) I had never been through Arkansas, and it was a hot day, and there was a tree up ahead of us. And I said, "Ooo, that tree looks good"—the shade, you know. When we got to the tree, I saw two bare feet hanging down from the tree. I said, "Oh, my goodness! There's been a lynching!" (laughs) It was a man in overalls, barefooted, sitting—sitting up in the tree smoking a cob pipe. And I said that was my introduction to Arkansas. It scared the life out of me because I thought there'd been a lynching."

Today, the road trip is as popular as ever in the U.S., with a growing number of people considering it a hobby. Some even think of it as an art. The Internet has made it possible for road trip enthusiasts everywhere to share ideas, tips, and experiences.

Casimir remembers traveling through the Holland Tunnel in 1933.

Hear memories of traveling in the car, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Road Trips
(03:59 )

Airdate: June 11

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Fathers teach us valuable life lessons based on their own experiences, as they equip us to be responsible citizens and to make the most of our lives. Judge John F. Onion Jr. of Austin recalls an important lesson he learned from his dad, starting in 1936, when his dad ran a successful campaign for district judge in Bexar County:

"The incumbent for some reason would not get up on a platform and speak. He had a young lawyer who had been an assistant DA get up and make all his speeches for him. And my dad—I heard him on the platform say, ‘My opponent is here, ladies and gentlemen. He's standing right down there. When it came his time to speak to you, he sent his young mouthpiece up here to talk to you.' And he said, ‘Now, Mr. Beb Ladon is a good lawyer, but he's speaking for this guy who thinks he's too good to get up and speak to you. Now, you know, he used to be known as Fred Stevens.' Said, 'When he became district judge, it became Frederick Stevens.' Says, ‘Now, most of you good people know me as Pete. Now, wouldn't it be a shame, when you elect me district judge, I start calling myself Peterick?' And he says, ‘Now let me tell you about what's going on down there at the courthouse.' (interviewer laughs)"

After the election, Onion remembers learning that his father had plans to go quail hunting with his adversary's right-hand man:

"And I was shocked. And I looked at my dad, and I said, ‘You mean to tell me you're going hunting in the morning with Beb Ladon?' I said, ‘He was your opponent's campaign manager. He's the one who got up and made speeches for your opponent.' I said, ‘How could you be going hunting with him?' I said, ‘I wouldn't have anything whatsoever to do with him.' And he looked at me one night. He says, ‘One thing you're going to learn in life is the people who were against you once might be your best friends later on in life, ones that you may deeply treasure. And you never turn your back on them because they were not on your side just on one occasion.' And he said, ‘He's been nice to me. We enjoy each other's company. He tries cases in my court. I hold nothing against him.'"

This was difficult for Onion to understand at first, and he had to think it over for a while:

"But later on Beb Ladon went hunting with him any number of times. And one of the first lawyers I went to see when I got out of law school to ask, ‘What do you think I ought to do? Where can I light? Where can I'—you know, was Beb Ladon because he not only had been my dad's friend, he had represented my dad on some of the condemnation of the property out there on Bandera Road when they were trying to take it for highway purposes and things. And then, of course, after my dad had died and I came on the scene, I mean, he was a good, good friend. In fact, I think after I was already on the [Texas] Court of Criminal Appeals we were on a trip to London together."

Onion never forgot that lesson about burning bridges, and he has passed it on to his children, as well as to friends.

Onion's dad and a man campaigning against him decided to let bygones be bygones.

Hear wise words from a father, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

A Lesson Learned from Dad
(03:50 )

Airdate: July 2

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Americans have celebrated the Fourth of July in various ways since 1777, the first anniversary of the founding of our country.

In Waco, the first Italian immigrants who arrived in the latter part of the nineteenth century were eager to adopt the American holiday, according to Mary Sendón. During her youth in the early 1900s, she remembers the local Italian families gathering every July Fourth for a picnic at Spring Lake, near present-day Lacy-Lakeview:

"That picnic would last from early morning until—and it was very picturesque. We didn't have cars, and some people had buggies and horses. And those who did have buggies would go and take as many as they could. You know, this was in East Waco. And they would take as many people as they could in their buggies, but most of the people hired moving vans. You know what a moving van is—big ol' truck with side pieces, kind of like a cattle truck. They put benches alongside, and everybody, they'd help all the kids and the women up in there, and they'd sit on the benches there. And we'd drive out to this picnic ground. And they'd cook food out there. They'd barbecue meat. They'd even cook spaghetti in big washtubs out in the open. We didn't have cold drinks so much, but they would make tea and then make lemonade."

She describes some of the recreational activity on the lake during the picnics:

"The teenager type would want to take rides in the boat, you know. And some of the men—some of the younger men would be—get in those boats, and they'd take some of the girls riding. But my—every time they took the girls riding, my grandfather went along. He chaperoned that boat. (laughs)"

Sendón tells about years when the family spent Independence Day at home:

"That was the day that we all got together. My dad would fix things in the house that needed fixing, and we'd do things, you know. And then he'd go down, buy watermelons, and we'd get out in the back and have watermelon, and that was a fun day with him. And my grandfather would be home, too. You know, when the men were in the house there was something different. The atmosphere was different. But I always enjoyed the Fourth. We just had such a big time on the Fourth. My grandfather was born on July the fourth. And when he was sixty years old, (laughs) my mother made him a huge, three-tiered cake, and my sister and I, we bought red, white, and blue candles, these tiny little candles. It took us hours to figure out how to get sixty candles on that cake. And I remember he thought that was the best thing he'd—he said, ‘Who put the candles on the cake?' He thought that was so good."

During WWII, George McDowell of Houston served in the Italian Campaign in a combined British and American headquarters. He recalls July 4, 1943, when they were bivouacked at Lake Bolsena, roughly 100 miles north of Rome:

"The RAF types in our section there, they said, We're going down and celebrate Fourth of July right with you Yanks, see. And there they had Beretta pistols firing up in the air. About that time, General Cannon (vehicle horn honks outside) came out of his trailer and says, ‘What the hell's going on down there?' And I told him, and he says, ‘For God's sake, go down there and stop them because we're right on the front lines of where—' The night fighters that were doing strafe invasions were using Lake Bolsena to check their guns before they kept going, see. ‘And they'll think that we're right there on the front lines.' And so I had to get in my jeep and go down there, said, ‘Boys, the celebration of Fourth of July is over.' (laughs)"

Whether with picnics, quality time with family, fireworks, or other customs, Independence Day offers us the chance to reflect on what it means to be an American.

Picnickers in the early 1900s.

Hear about celebrations of our country's birthday, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Fourth of July
(03:58 )

Airdate: July 16 (2013)

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the public square in downtown Waco—the space around city hall—was the center of activity for the city and surrounding areas.

Wilford Naman explains how important the square was to local cotton farmers:

"Buyers representing many foreign concerns—English and Japanese—had their offices on the square. And they had men out on the square buying cotton. Of course, they were getting by telegraph the prices that were being paid in New Orleans—was the center of the cotton market—and New York also."

Naman describes how local National Guard members brought some pizzazz to Waco:

"I remember driving with my father and mother in a buggy on summer evenings when I was a boy and watching them on the square drill, and that was before and after the war with Spain in 1898."

Mary Sendón shares her memories of the Waco square of her youth:

"That was the parking lot for cowboys and farmers. And you could go down, buy your produce on the square from off the wagon. Now, many times my grandfather would go down and buy a whole load of watermelons, and he'd have the man drive him home. He'd—they'd pull up front of the house on this wagon, you know, was a flat wagon—flat-top wagon. And he'd bring a bunch of watermelons in. But that's how they got a lot of good produce: by trading on the square. But they said the cowboys would bring bedrolls and sleep in the wagons or put it under the wagon and sleep under the wagon."

Sendón remembers the predecessor of the current city hall building, which stood in the square for four decades, from 1888 to 1928:

"And old city hall was an old-fashioned building. Looked like one of our old-fashioned schools. You got lost—I went in there one time with my dad. I remember you wound all the way around trying to find—and that's where the police department was. And our policemen would be stationed on the square and everybody on a block, everywhere. And the policemen wore different outfits then. They wore kind of—it almost looked like a band uniform jacket, you know, kind of a military type of jacket. And they wore these hats that looked like—oh, what do they—what'd they wear in the jungles? You know, those type of hats? They had the funny-looking dome-shape hats."

Interviewer: "Like a pith helmet."

"Yes, yes. That's what it was. That's what it looked like."

The square featured several restaurants, as well as street food, as Sendón explains:

"But the men would have little carts that opened up like a box, you know, and inside they would have something to keep them warm. I don't know how they did it. But they had tamales, real tamales. They were good tamales. And they would have a stack of newspapers sitting by, and they would put your tamales in a piece of newspaper. And you would see coming—people coming down the street with newspaper with grease coming out of it. (laughter) My grandfather would go and buy those and bring them home, you know. Bring home hot tamales."

Public squares in most towns gradually began to lose their prominence in the twentieth century. In Waco, the tornado in 1953 certainly did not help matters and was the death knell for many of the structures around the square. The tornado abruptly changed downtown forever.

Waco's city hall building and square in 1912. (Photo by Fred Gildersleeve)

Revisit the city square of old, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

The Square in Waco
(03:50 )

Airdate: July 30

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Each summer, millions of children across the United States attend summer camps, where they learn about teamwork, encounter life lessons, and make friends.

In the summer of 1937, after graduating from West Point, George McDowell of Houston worked at a boys' camp in Maine, teaching horseback riding. He remembers one overnight trip he took his campers on:

"It started raining like everything and—so these kids, they had never thought about tying horses to picket lines and stuff like that. We fixed a picket line up. And one of these horses broke loose, and he went charging over to a—an abandoned wooden store over in front and started climbing up on the front porch. And he sunk clear through the rotten boards (laughs) on the thing. We had a heck of a time getting him out of that. (laughter)"

Pastor Fred Craddock, professor emeritus at Emory University in Atlanta, recalls some of his summers as a young boy at Bethany Hills, a Disciples of Christ camp near Nashville:

"Ministers were there. Back in those days, youth camps, they didn't try to get a lot of young people to be the sponsors or teachers. Nowadays, a youth minister in a church is usually about three years older than the young people themselves. Back then, older ministers were very close to kids. And the ministers most influential on me were almost retirement age, and one of them was retired. They seemed to have more time and not threatened by questions, not impatient. Some of these I found out later were ministers of huge churches in Nashville and other places, but they just seemed so giving of the time. And they would come as counselors at youth camp."

Opened in 1964, Baylor Camp served as a training ground for Baylor students interested in recreational vocations. Mary McCall of Dallas remembers its creation, which was a project close to the heart of her first husband, Lloyd Russell, who was then the head of Baylor's physical education department:

"He wanted the Baylor Camp so badly. And it just worked out that the lake was being enlarged at that time, and a lot of people whose houses were to be flooded, particularly the Lacys, gave their houses out on the lake, and they were moved. It was quite a project to move those houses over to the land that Baylor had bought for a camp out on the—what is now called the Baylor Camp Road near China Spring. That's how they started: just from scratch, really. And then they had a barracks building from the airport area that they were able to lift and make a gymnasium. And then they had a building that they moved in for a cafeteria. So it gradually developed into a very, very active and attractive camp. It was an active place. I loved going out there. If I wanted to see Lloyd, I went out and stayed at the camp. And we had a little place where we could stay."

McCall recounts a favorite story from those early years:

"Dr. Stonie Cotten's son was I think in a tree and—or somewhere—and fell and—and broke his arm. And, of course, they called his dad, and he came and got him and took him and had it set. And the kid wouldn't go home. He wanted to stay at the camp. (laughter) And so they put the—put it in a sling or in a cast, and he—his dad let him come back and stay at the camp."

While summer camps have traditionally championed the great outdoors, nowadays many camps specialize in areas such as music, art, technology, and sports. There's something for everyone.

Campers discover the joys of canoeing.

Hear memories of summer camps, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Summer Camps
(04:00 )

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

For more than a century, Americans have enjoyed going to the movies. Before TV took over the country, movies were the window into the world for many people.

Wilford Naman describes the first moving picture he ever saw around the turn of the century in Waco:

"It was a custom at the opera house, they called it, where they had Shakespearean plays, between acts they would show motion pictures, keep people sort of satisfied while they're resting, you know. And the motion picture would be of a fire engine because they would in—in the pictures have motion of the horses, you know, and the smoke. They didn't have, in the early days, just picture shows. They showed them in the theatre as sort of an icing on the cake."

Mary Sendón recalls Waco in the early 1900s:

"We had one movie theatre when I was just a kid, and it was called the Crystal, and that's where I saw my first movie, and it was an Indian story. It was done in brown, sepia color. All I can remember seeing Indians running up and down the mountains and the soldiers chasing the Indians."

Joe Ward Jr. of Waco describes going to the movies in the 1920s:

"There was no sound, and every theatre had an organ. And the organ would play music with a mood to whatever was going on in the movie. And my first introduction to classical music was the "William Tell Overture," which was always played when the cavalry was on the way to rescue the wagon train from the Indians."

Argie Medearis recalls the routine she shared with her cousin in the 20s and 30s in Waco:

"My grandmother, she'd give us this here dime or nickel, whatever it was on Saturday, and we'd go to the cowboy was on at the Fox, Tom Mix."

For nearly two decades, The March of Time was shown before movies and kept Americans abreast of international news. Robert Feather of Dallas tells about watching the newsreel during WWII at a theatre in Springfield, Missouri:

"They showed a clip, and my dad, as chaplain, was speaking to a group of soldiers. And I got up and left and went to the telephone or payphone and called my mom and told her, took her the next night to see that."

Ina Billups remembers going to the movies as an African American in Goliad, Texas, in the 1940s and 50s:

"We had to sit upstairs. And they had—would bring in live entertainments. I saw Gene Autry on stage with his horse, Rex Allen, (laughs) a number of them. And then there was a time where they had—on Wednesday nights, I believe, they would show Spanish movies. It was all in Spanish. And we'd go anyway just because there was nowhere else to go. (laughs)"

Movie theatres today are struggling, as they must compete with less expensive and ever-increasing Internet options. Some analysts predict that movie-going will look quite different in the coming years, as the movie industry attempts to appeal to a new generation of patrons.

Robert Feather remembers
watching  The March of Time.

Hear favorite movie-watching memories, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Going to the Movies
(03:56 )

Airdate: November 12

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

The GI Bill is a term often associated with the years immediately following World War II, but it has existed in some form or fashion since then. A revamped version approved by Congress in 2008, known as the Post-9/11 GI Bill, has given new life to the program and increased the number of veterans on college campuses throughout the country.

Brandon Ewing served in the marine corps for five years and entered Baylor University in 2009 on the new GI Bill to pursue a bachelor's degree in economics and international studies. He describes his experiences as a student veteran in a 2011 interview:

"I purposefully gave up my college-age years—I guess typical college-age years—to go into the military and to do that, but you still—those years are formative and they still make you who you are, and so, you know, I still went through the same kind of thing in the military. So when I come out of the military and go into college then I'm put back with people that are just going through that. So I always feel like I walked back into—it's not like high school, but I always felt like I kind of went back into that—it's great to be older and to have experience. When I was in high school, you know, I was a A and B student, but I could have done a lot better. I could have pushed myself a lot harder. I understand that now, so there's a lot of advantages to being older and to being here and doing it. And in a lot of ways, you know, people always say, If I knew then what I know now, well, I kind of get that. I kind of am in that position, which is—which is great."

Lieutenant Colonel Matt Pirko came to Baylor in 2010 with 20 years in the air force and enrolled in the master's program in information systems with a security emphasis. In his second semester at Baylor, he reflected on his return to the university setting:

"Having lived in Italy for three years my wife and I were both able to learn the language, so I've become involved—I'm the vice president of the Italian Club here on campus. I'm secretary of the Graduate Business Association. I think the students here for the most part are here to really learn and challenge themselves a little bit. Undergrads are always going to be undergrads, and that's going to be an—mean some differences in the approach. But I think that, honestly, being an older student in this setting, even in the undergraduate classes, it gives a certain different perspective. Some of the professors have a tough time dealing with that because you have more practical experience than they do in certain areas. It kind of scares them a little bit. But I think the kids get something out of hearing, oh, there's someone who's been there, done that, as opposed to just the esoteric nature of academia. Yeah, there's the real world, and then there's academia. We have to pull the two together a little bit more, but I think that I can add something to that by being here. And it's—Baylor's given back a lot to me too. I've enjoyed my time here, and I enjoy what I do."

Pirko explains what he sees as the benefit of having student veterans at colleges and universities:

"I mean, it sounds a little cliché to say it, but I think the caliber of students that you get, when they've had military experience of any kind, is going to be slightly different and slightly higher than a normal undergraduate coming directly out of a high school. That sounds pretentious a little bit, but I think it's true."

In 2012, both Ewing and Pirko graduated with their respective degrees. The Post-9/11 GI Bill has undergone some changes since it was introduced but is still going strong. This fall semester of 2013, Baylor has approximately 100 student veterans attending classes.

Veterans Day honored on the Baylor campus.

Hear veterans talk about returning to the university classroom, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Baylor Student Veterans
(03:59 )

Airdate: November 19

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

The First World War—or the Great War or World War, as it was known until 1939—began in the summer of 1914, sparked by the assassination of the archduke of Austria, but widespread imperialism was the fundamental cause of the conflict. The United States entered the war in April 1917, and more than four million Americans would serve in uniform in some capacity over the next year and a half.

Waco native Mary Sendón had three uncles who served in World War I: one in the States, one in France, and one in Italy. She remembers the one stationed in France:

"My Uncle Phillip was given six weeks training at Fort Sam [Houston] and then rushed right into the trenches. And he was in two of the big battles there, one that was in the Argonne Forest and the other one was Château-Thierry. And when they got into the Argonne Forest, his detachment was lost, got strayed away from the main unit, and he was reported missing in action. That was the worst day of our lives, I guess, in our house, because we got the telegram that he was missing in action. Of course, my grandmother knew that he was dead. That was all she could think of. And I'll tell you, you have no idea what a—what a situation was in our family at that time. It was the most depressing years that I can remember. And he was lost for a long time.

"And all of a sudden we got a telegram—it was from the War Department. They had found him. And, you know, we came home from school—my sister and I came home from school that day, and I think I was in high school by that time. My sister and I, we got almost to our house and we heard all this noise of people. We walked into that house, and they—all of the men had quit work and come home and they had some of their friends there, and they were just having the best time because my Uncle Phillip was alive. And, of course, he was—they put him in the Army of Occupation in Germany and he stayed a little while longer after the war, but he liked it in Germany. He said they treated him like a king."

But Sendón explains that her uncle's homecoming had a dark cloud hanging over it:

"The Germans started using mustard gas the very last of the war, and he got a whiff of mustard gas. And it didn't show. They sent the boys to the hospital, but they said, I don't think you—they didn't get enough of it to bother. And after one year it began to show, and everybody thought he had tuberculosis. And, oh, it was—it was bad. And he was gone within a year."

W. W. Naman of Waco served in France in World War I and volunteered to study observation posts with the French artillery corps. He recalls climbing up a tree in an open meadow to check out one observation spot:

"I couldn't see anything. I wondered what in the world he brought me up here for; I couldn't see anything. So I inquired about it, and he said, ‘Well, you see that tree over there?' which was about three hundred yards, I guess, or two hundred, a tree not unlike the one we were in. He said, ‘There's a German observer over there.' (laughter) He said, ‘He's been over there and I've been over here for months, and we don't fire on one another. There's no use of it. We just—we both know we're out here observing and that's all there is to it.' He said, ‘We have an understanding.'"

By the time the war ended in November of 1918, more than 110,000 members of the American military had died, many from the Spanish Flu, and another 200,000 had been wounded. One legacy of the war is that America's involvement dramatically expanded the size of the US government and military.

WWI soldier in the trenches. Many gas masks of the era were ineffective in protecting the soldiers' lungs.

Hear memories of the war to end all wars, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

World War I
(03:57 )

Airdate: November 26

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Thanksgiving is a special time of year, as we spend time with loved ones and hope to create lasting memories.

Robert Levy of Waco recalls taking his daughter to New York in the 1950s and attending the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade:

"We were in a drugstore on about Fifty-Seventh Street watching the parade come by—come down Broadway and make that turn at Fifty-Seventh Street and get on down to—went on down through the business district. And I was standing there on a scale trying to hold Carolyn up so she could see the parade over the crowd, you know. And some man came up to me and said, ‘I see you're trying to show your daughter the parade.' And I said, ‘Yes, that's right.' He said, ‘Well, I've got a better place for you to go.' And he said, ‘Let's go upstairs to my apartment.'

"And he took us up on the—about the third floor, and there he had a big apartment right on that turn, you know, where you could see them coming down and see them going by. And he said, ‘Now, I'm going to lunch at my sister's in the country.' And he said, ‘I'm going to leave you all here. And he said, ‘When you leave, all you have to do is to lock my door, go down and leave the key with the super or with the—at the office here'—it was a big apartment building—and said, ‘You'll enjoy the parade.' So we stayed in and watched the parade from that time on sitting in a chair, you know, and every bit of it came by. Not many New Yorkers would do that, I don't think, and I don't think many people would. But this man, somehow, he saw me struggling to keep her up there to see that."

Thanksgiving also nudges us to start thinking about the Christmas season and what needs—or doesn't need—to be done. Ulysses Williams of Woodville, Virginia, was an army battery commander in the 1960s at Fort Hancock in New Jersey. He describes one holiday season when some men in his command decided to save money and cut down trees themselves for the upcoming Christmas party:

"So they didn't know where the hell boundaries were. So they end up on an estate. And just so happened that road there on the estate was lined with Colorado blue spruces. And then they cut about three or four of them (laughter) and headed out with the truck down the road. (laughs) And the fellow was coming in from New York who lived on the estate. I was up in the radar in the fire control section. Fellow called me and said, ‘Sir, you better come down here. We got a civilian out here, and he's angry as hell." So I said, ‘Well, let him in. I'll be down there.'

"So he came in, and he was hollering. He was saying(??), ‘Do you know what your soldiers just did?' He said, ‘I just run across the fellows, they cut down three of my Colorado blue spruces. He said, ‘Well, Colorado blue spruce cost five hundred dollars each when I bought them, and they're bigger now.' (laughs) He said, ‘Well, who's going to pay for them?' I said, ‘Well, if they cut them they have to pay for them. We have to set up something for them to do.' But we sort of won him over. He accepted something other than Colorado blue spruces, (laughs) but he was angry. The old exec in the—on account of the battery—but the trying exec(??) used to send me a note. Thanksgiving, he'd send me a little note: ‘Willie, don't cut any Christmas trees this year.' (laughter)"

This Thanksgiving, let's focus on family and staying out of trouble.

Onlookers at the 1956 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Photo courtesy of Bettmann/CORBIS)

Hear memories of the holiday that kicks off the Christmas season, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Thanksgiving
(03:47 )

Airdate: December 3

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

The one-room schoolhouse is an iconic image of rural America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These buildings were the focal points of communities and often doubled as churches on Sundays and served as meeting places for area events.

Ophelia Mayberry Hall reflects on the school she attended in the 1920s in Lincolnville, a community near Gatesville that was created by former slaves after the Civil War:

"When the black people used to go and work for the white people and they had what they called wash benches and they'd put the tubs and things on the wash benches for our parents to wash, well, that's what we had to sit on—wash benches to sit on. No back, just sitting there bent over, you know, with our books in our laps."

Voy Althaus remembers the one-room Big Flat School in Gillespie County, which he enrolled in at the age of six in the 1930s:

"It had a woodstove that never kept the place warm in really cold weather. The water supply was a cistern that caught—above-ground cistern that caught the water off the roof."

Usually one teacher was assigned to a country school, and trying to teach the various grade levels and subjects while maintaining order could be a challenge, as Althaus explains:

"There was one book in the little small twenty- or thirty-book library in the school that had hand language for the deaf, and so everybody that went to that school learned their alphabet on hand language. And every time the teacher's back was turned, we talked to each other. And I guess that really was better than throwing chalk at the blackboard while her (laughter) back was turned."

Althaus remembers that the grounds of Big Flat School were ripe for imagination:

"The school was located on a acre of land that was cleared, but all the way around the school was dense cedar breaks. And we were allowed to play in them; at least the boys were. So we played great games of cops and robbers and Indians and cowboys every chance we could get. And just a couple of hundred yards away from the school was an abandoned steam tractor of all things. It seemed monstrous to us at the time, and we could walk down there and play on that and nobody minded."

He recalls how his education afforded him some time in the limelight:

"We had a porch on that building, and every country school had a school closing, and we used that porch for our stage. Everybody would bring their own chairs. And so everybody had to participate in something in the closing, and I was trying to play the guitar at the time and play the harmonica at the same time. So every year at school closing while I was there, I treated all that captive audience to my playing and singing."

In the early twentieth century, advances in transportation led to the consolidation of many one-room schools, as students could travel farther, and by World War II larger schools with multiple classrooms and teachers were becoming the norm. Today, most one-room schoolhouses have been torn down or repurposed, but some remain in use for elementary education in rural areas and among the Amish.

A schoolhouse in Cheapside, Texas, in Gonzales County. (Courtesy of mlhradio on Flickr)

Hear memories of attending small rural schools, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

One-room Schools
(03:55 )

Airdate: December 10

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.

Oral history allows individuals to tell about their experiences in their own words. It's a guided process, in which the interviewer arrives prepared, having done the necessary research to ask the right kinds of questions. The goal is to create a recording that present and future generations can use.

Oral historian Dan Utley, currently at Texas State University in San Marcos, remembers what he learned while working with some exceptional history teachers early on in his career at Cy-Fair High School near Houston:

"And these were people who had the temerity to argue about history. And so we would have our breaks together, and we would sit around and argue history. And it's the first time I realized history's not just facts and dates and things like that, but it's—it can be interpreted. And this is where I start to realize there's more to history than just academics. That it's real, it's personal."

Utley recalls what attracted him to oral history:

"I love the fact that somebody else has got some information that I want and that I can help them go back and look at it and reanalyze it. And sometimes, you know, they haven't thought about it in a long time, and you can touch stories from their past that they've forgotten. You can take them back and reintroduce them to people they knew. And it's a wonderful opportunity. And I could not get enough of it. I just wanted to interview everybody (laughs) I could—I could think of."

Utley shares his particular method in choosing projects and interviewees:

"And I want to get to people before they've told their story. The worst oral histories I've ever been a part of were where somebody said, ‘Oh, you got to hear their stories. They're just great.' Well, they're—they're stories they've told so many times that they're boilerplate. I want to get to the people who don't want to talk, who haven't talked, who didn't even know they should have talked. (laughs) Those are the people I want to get because their voices aren't going to be heard otherwise, you know. I mean, I like the challenge. I like the fact, well, my research shows you're the person to talk to. And you may be reluctant, but we're going to get there together, you know."

While a graduate student at the University of Texas, Tom Charlton learned that approaching prominent public figures has its challenges as well, when he attempted to interview former governor Allan Shivers for his master's thesis:

"I was ushered into Shivers' office. And he came from around his desk, and I had my notes with me in my left hand and my recorder in my right hand. And he said something to the effect, ‘So you're the young man who wants to talk to me about the Department of Public Safety.' I said, ‘Yes, Governor.' And he saw that I had something in my hand, and he said, ‘Well, I don't know if I can tell you very much. He said—he guessed that I had some notes. He said, ‘Let me see what you have there, boy.'

"And so he took the notes out of my hand that I had, and he said, ‘Let's see, the first thing you're going to ask me about, I don't remember much about that. The second thing, I don't think we have time to go into that today. The third thing is—you don't want to hear about all that. That's not very interesting. The fourth thing'—and he went right down my interview outline and just blew me out of the water completely. And he said, ‘I suppose that's about all.' Said, ‘Mr. Charlton, thank you for coming by.' And he shook hands with me and ushered me out the door."

Although disastrous, that interview proved to be a learning experience for Charlton, who stayed the course, developed a deep love for oral history, and in 1970 became the first director of the Institute for Oral History at Baylor.

An oral history interview in progress.

Hear from two oral history luminaries, in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:

Oral History
(03:56 )