She made a very interesting comment when she said that she was trying to put all of the connections together with all of the families in Aubrey, most especially the old saying that everybody is kin to everybody in Aubrey.

My response to her was a nod of my head; I further commented that is not the situation as days go by because the population is changing so rapidly. We are less kin to one another these days than we were back in the 1930's. The young people have a wider selection of friends now between cousins and those that are not cousins.

I mentioned last week that William Illie King was married into the Wilson family to Abbie. Since then, I have discovered that William Illie King was listed on the 1930 census as a 21-year-old boarder. He was an employee of the railroad and boarded with 21 other railroad workers that were working on the railroad track from Sherman to Fort Worth. Aubrey just happened to be the location where the workers took residence.

The 21-year-old was from Mississippi and was on of about five workers where from Mississippi. These men helped to refinish the Aubrey railroad.

Illie continued to correspond with Abbie by mail after the railroad was completed. He stayed in touch with his future bride, and he then became kin to everybody in Aubrey.

So when new people come into town, it has become the experience that they soon are kin to everyone.

Thomas and Jimmy F. Wilson lived on West Pecan in 1930. They lived only a couple of blocks away from the railroad cars that were designed to be the workers’ residence. The workers job titles ranged from Linemen, cooks, signalman and foreman. Herschell H. Terrell was foreman of the crew.

I always wondered why Illie called my grandfather, Uncle Wood Goin; but if you think back when we were kids, we were required to use the title of Uncle or Aunt when referring to adults whether we knew them or not. This was an example set forth by out older Cherokee ancestry. It was like: Uncle Ed, Aunt Bertha, Uncle Adam or almost anyone if they were older.

My brother told Sticker Thorne, who was a very small older man (about 5'2") and a local citizen of our town, that when he got older he was going to whip him, but he wanted to get a little bigger before he took on the task of whipping the little old man. He wanted to whip him because he was not going to call him Uncle.

But when my brother went into the army at 18 years of age, he only weighed 104 pounds, which was one pound above the requirement to enter the military.

When he got out of the army, he did weigh more. Sticker Thorne came up to him and looked up to my brother and said, "Come on Buddy, I want to see if you are going to whip me now."

Buddy looked down and said, "no you are too little. I don’t want to fight someone smaller than I am." Sticker laughed and was always reminding Buddy and everyone else of Buddy’s threat.