January 10, 2000

I was explaining last week how I came about all of the historical items I have in my possession. I explained about finding all of the boxes of books and papers in my Aunt Sis’s apartment in Fort Worth. My cousin Billie and I sorted through all of the boxes and it was my responsibility to find a place to store all of the boxes. So Jackie and all my kids helped me load the next day. I looked closely with Noel, Onor, Deborah, Lou and Sam, (Sam was about two years old). The mystery

of how all the heavy books got on top of the only entrance to the attic has not been solved to this day, as we found no other entry to the Belmont apartment attic.

We left three trailer loads in the barn on our farm north of Aubrey for about a year, then had to move everything when we sold the farm to Bill Campbell of Dallas. I have often wondered if anyone ever went to the barn and helped themselves to anything. Maybe not, as there was nothing that appeared to be of great value.

I have spent the last twenty-five years sorting through this old pile of valuable records. Looking through this mountain of printed matter, I found it contained much family history, as well as, lots of history of Onega, including old photographs. I know other families of Onega might have had similar treasures that may have been lost, as I know how close this fund of information came to being missed by us.

Many of the old books and papers came from the northwest bedroom of Grandma’s house. It was seldom used because it was too cold to sleep in during the winter and too hot to use in the summer. We didn’t like it as children because it was dark, gloomy and smelled musty with all the old boxes of books and papers neatly stacked up.

There are indeed more family mysteries, but all this was just barely discovered at the Belmont apartment. It makes me feel all this was preordained and made possible by the efforts of others before me. It also makes me feel I was the intended party to receive it. I recently discovered some old Galveston newspapers which date back to1858 and were produced by the A.H. Belo Corporation. I have found papers from San Antonio dated 1873-1876. The condition of these papers is surprisingly good and I will be able to unearth clues concerning people and places of that time.

MEDICINE MAN

My brother Buddy had a 1940 Ford that was a dream car to everybody then as well as now. Buddy was home from WW II and working at Sam Laney’s in Denton.

He would allow me to drive the car if I would take good care of it, keep it clean, oiled, don’t speed and be sure to keep the inside smelling nice.

Grandma loved being driven around, so she and I made many little jogs down to Farmers Branch for Grandma’s favorite medicine as I found it rewarding to keep her in her favorite brand.

You see, Grandma taught a lot of the people of Onega how to manufacture this illegal product and she was a good judge of the quality. I remember she had a brown jug with a shelled corn cob crammed down into the mouth of the jug.

This would keep it from evaporating while kept in it’s usual place as a door stop.

The jug would keep the wind from blowing the door shut.

Since Grandma was a part of Onega before it became Aubrey, she made good friends with the Onega Natives and also worked closely with the medicine man of the Sandtown Indian Village. She was also a midwife for the area and new settlers became a part of her life as new additions arrived.

Aunt Sis was a canning demonstrator for the Ball Jar Company during the depression era and traveled all over Texas. She kept old newspapers that tell of how the Federal Marshals would discover stills and dump as much as 150 gallons into the ground. Many stills could be easily tracked down as the smoke was a give away to their location.

Lookout scouts were alert around stills (if they didn’t use too much of their own product ) and gave warning so the finished product could be quickly moved or concealed. However, If Federal agents bribed their way into camp, they had no sympathy and delighted in getting the amount of their reward money published in the papers, especially on large caches.

This is recorded history of the time from newspapers, but Grandma had a relative here in Aubrey who used her recipe whose still was never raided. No wonder, as the county sheriff was one of his best customers. One of the tales told about him was that he sampled his wares quite a lotonce, fell in a dry abandoned well shaft and wasn’t found for three days when he sobered up to yell.

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