Sharecropping and Christmas plays in Three Oaks
By Lois Zook Wauson for the Wilson County News.
Melba Traeger Dunn was born at home on a cold blustery windy December night in 1934. Her parents, Hilda and Paul Traeger, lived out west of Floresville on the highway going to Dewees. They were farmers. When she was about five years old they moved to Three Oaks. She had two older brothers, Paul and Robert, at that time.
In Three Oaks, they lived not far from her father's parents, and did sharecropping with them. They lived in a "really old, old house" for a few years, then they built a new house to live in. While building it, she remembers they lived in the "corn crib," probably a barn. Her father put a bathroom in the house, but they didn't have running water, so it was never used. They bathed in washtubs and had an outhouse.
She said, "We didn't have electricity, so we always had lamps with kerosene, and a wood stove for heat and a kerosene cook stove. When the REA came in with electricity, it was an exciting time. I remember that night, we shut all the doors in the other rooms and stood in there and waited for Daddy to pull the string. It was a big deal to see that bright light come on!"
"We always had a battery radio and that's how we listened to "Just Plain Bill," "Stella Dallas," and "Light Crust Doughboys."
Melba went to school at Dewees School. Her teacher was Miss Jackie Youngblood. They walked to school most of the time. It was a long walk — several miles. Everyone walked back then. But lots of times they got to take the buggy to school. Her brother Robert was the "driver" and she and her younger brother Delbert, who had been born by then, went too. The horse stayed hitched to a tree during school.
Her memories of the Christmas plays are her favorite. "I always remember the Christmas plays. It was so exciting to see the Christmas plays and to be in the Christmas plays. If we dressed up, since we had no money, we dressed up in crepe paper dresses. Mother made the dresses and gathered them and made them look really pretty."
She said, "I remember the recesses when the bell rang and you had to hurry and run to the 'rest room' (the outhouse) and get back fast. And I remember Louis Jansky always teased me and one day at recess he tied me to a tree, right before recess was over, and I was at the farthest tree on that lot and I was crying because I was tied to the tree and everyone was laughing at me. I will never forget that. He was a mean one!"
"I remember having a boyfriend!" she said. "That was in sixth grade. He was Henry Fisbeck. He was always so kind. I knew he was kind because he always bought me a soda. Do you know what a treat that was? We didn't have a nickel for a soda! He would go across the road to Helen Schneider's store and buy me a soda at lunch. It was usually a Big Hippo or something. He was the nicest boy friend."
Like most children who grew up on farms in the '30s and early '40s, Melba had to work in the fields. She had to pick cotton. She still has the little cotton sack her mother made for her when she was a little girl. "I was so scared of the little jumping spiders. I remember sitting under the wagon for shade, to eat the food our mother brought out to us at lunch time."
She picked cotton, chopped cotton, chopped peanuts, helped with the harvesting of the peanuts, and helped her mother with fixing the food for the peanut thrashers and taking it to them. She said, "That was a big deal. You got to see all those people and visit with people you didn't see often."
She said, "I had to help Mama with the washing. She washed clothes in black wash pots. I couldn't get close, because she didn't want me to get near the fire. My mother had the whitest clothes I ever saw. She always had white clothes. She used lye soap and scrubbed and scrubbed."
Christmas times were hard in their family. They didn't have much money. They would cut a cedar tree for a Christmas tree. She said, "There was one year there was no money for gifts. Mother gave me a little ceramic shoe. That's all I remember getting that year."
Going to town in Floresville was a treat like most farm kids back then. They didn't go to town very often. Her mother would go to Almarene Kuban's Beauty Shop. It was upstairs next to Ballard's Drug Store. She got those old-fashioned perms with long electric wires coming down. Like most farm families back then, while her mother was at the beauty shop, her father would go to the beer joint and drink beer. "Relaxing," he always said.
When her sister Lucille was born, Melba was about 11. It was her job to stay home with Lucille and take care of her, while her mother would go out to the fields to work.
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Lois Zook Wauson is the oldest of eight children who grew up on a farm in Wilson County in the mid-20th century. Her column, "Rainy days & Starry Nights" appeared in the Wilson County News.
