1 Memories

Memories from Ed Younts - transcribed January 2023

Ed Younts: Well, I guess really this is my memories about our grandparents, Frank and Esther Gallaway.  I'd ride the Greyhound bus to Wharton from Alice, or not Greyhound but the Continental Trailways.  I'd ride to Wharton.  Granddaddy'd pick me up at the bus stop, or Uncle Junior, he'd pick me up sometimes, and take me straight to the farm.  And I made the rounds.  We checked goats and we checked hogs and had Blue Bell Ice Cream 'n' went to the rest home.

   One of those favorite memories was at night he'd say, "Let's have us a quick supper and we'll get us some Blue Bell Ice Cream and go out there on the veranda and we'll sit down and I'll shell pecans.  And you shell them in two galvanized buckets, one bucket full of pecans and he'd shell them in another bucket.  And we'd shell them and eat Blue Bell Ice Cream."  

   But as I remember life was pretty slow.  He had an old 1950 Dodge pickup that he drove.  We'd go to the rest home first thing in the morning.  We'd get her something to eat.  You know, usually in town, I forget if there's a taco or muffin, whatever we'd get.  We'd have something to eat, [indistinct few words].  And then late that evening he was going back to see my grandmother and take her a little old cup of Blue Bell Ice Cream.

   So we did that and we'd go to the sale barn, the sale being, I think, was on Mondays in Wharton.  And he loved the sale barn.  You know, at one time he was a cattle buyer and he always raised a few cows.  And we'd go to the sale barn and he'd sit there and he'd tell me stories about the old days.  And that's what prompted me, I guess, to write that poem about him.  It was the days of the sale barn he'd come to Alice [Texas].  And in the old Dodge pickup he had a set of wooden rails on the back.  Well, he'd go to the sale barn and he'd buy six or eight goats and put them in the back of that truck.  And what he did, he waited till they were gonna leave.  And you can go to the sale barn any time and load what you bought.  So they'd stay two or three days and he'd go to the sale barn and load up his six or eight goats and he'd go back to Wharton and turn them out with the rest.

   Well, one of my stories was: I was down in the goat pen one morning.  I'd go down there and watch those goats.  He had a lot of them.  Well, I left the gate open.  They all got out and they went across this cotton field to the east.  And that's where the pecan orchards were.  So, we were there on a family vacation when this happened.  And he had to go to the hospital that night.  And he was driving and my dad was roping goats off the back of that pickup, trying to get them all caught.

Garr Lystad: How many were there?

Ed Younts:  Probably fifty or sixty.  A bunch.  They finally got them in the pen and figured out I'm the one that left the gate open.  I don't remember that but I got blamed for it.

   Another time we were all down there and Glenna Kay, our cousin, she's laughed at me a thousand times.  We were all dressed to go to the rest home.  I think it was on a Sunday evening.  And I crawled up on the fence to look at these hogs that he had in a pen up by the house.  And I was on the fence.  I don't know what she said, "I'll bet you a dollar." or "I'll bet you won't jump off on that hog."  And I jumped off on that hog, jumped right on top of that hog.  And the hog ran out from under me and I was this deep in mud.

   We had a lot of fun.  You know, Lois has a pretty fond, I don't know if it's fond memory, but she has a memory about getting across the creek, where the cattle were.  There was a little old foot bridge and they'd walk across that little foot bridge and get on the other side.  And this big, red bull got out one time and chased her about half a mile.  If she couldn't run like an antelope he would have caught her.