This is the story of my life, the best I know how to tell it. I’m gonna try my best. I was born March 26, 1931. Mama didn’t have a doctor. I was born at home with a midwife in attendance. I was named after Hugh Watson who worked with my daddy at Camp Stanley which was part of the San Antonio Arsenal. My daddy didn't particularly like the name Hugh, so I was always called by my nickname, Pete. We lived in Leon Springs, Texas, a small community on Highway 87 between San Antonio and Boerne. Mrs. Aue, the head coconut of the whole city lived on top of the hill in the big “casa”, the big one on top behind the town. Rudy’s dad had come over to Leon Springs from Germany and had bought and fenced the land as far as you could see. He owned every penny of it. He hired Mexican Americans to fence the land for him. He worked right along beside them, doing without food himself to get the work done. I hear he would take a can of sardines and a few crackers with him, but he never ate them. Everyday he would bring them home and put them back on the shelf of his store and sell them so that he would have enough money to fence the land. He had built a grocery store, a gas station, and a dance hall that his son, Rudy inherited when he died. Rudy ran the store and lived in one of four Aue houses across the railroad tracks along with his wife Julia and his two children. There was a schoolhouse and much later a church built across the highway from the store. Mr. Schaub, the neighborhood handy man, welding man, sort of a blacksmith lived in one of the houses along side the store. In one of the other houses, Mrs. Saley lived in a big two-story house; She was always out in her yard sweeping it clean when we passed by going to school. She lived to the 105 years old. She would tell us about the Indians. She said they would come at night and scare them. They would look in her windows and all kinds of stuff. She told us about the story of the Indians that came and captured Jeff and Clint Smith. The Indians came to the Smith home near the area where the remount at Camp Stanley is. The parents were having a dance or some kind of party one night and the Indians came and stole the two boys away. She said the Indians stuck a colt to make it bleed to make the family think that some animals killed the boys and took them off. The boys ended up riding with Geronimo, but finally were recaptured and taken back home.

My family lived in a house about a mile off the main highway on the Boerne Stage Road. The Old Chisholm Trail ran right in front of our house. The house next door to us, owned by Ernest Altgelt, was where the stagecoach stopped for the night on its way to Bandera. The stagecoach stop consisted of four buildings made of adobe, some kind of rock and log cabin like logs. I have a painted picture of them in my living room. We lived in a shotgun house, a long frame house with one room right after the other. My dad built the house and added on to it as needed. There were ten of us children, so he did a lot of additions, finally adding a second story.

There was no indoor plumbing; we used an outhouse. We had to pack water to the house. We washed our clothes in one of the nearby springs, heating the water on a wood fire, rubbing them on a rub board, and drying them on a fence. We used coal oil lamps for light and a wood burning stove for cooking. We eventually got a well, but it wasn’t until Archie and I came home from the navy that we had electricity, running water with a bathtub inside and that Daddy had put in a septic tank outside so that we could have an indoor commode. We had no heating in the house. My mom would heat bricks and put them in our beds on cold nights, and even then we would still be cold. In the mornings we would put our feet on warm bricks to warm up. At least two of us would sleep together and that helped keep us warm on cold nights. I always slept with my brother Archie and we were very close. We did almost everything together. We were inseparable. We played together and had the same friends, the Flores, the Pattons, the Neutzes, the Moreaus, and many more. We even went into the navy together. I miss him so much since his death in 1988.

My mom and dad would give us anything they had. They just didn’t have much. They worked very hard to just keep food on the table. There was never enough money or time. My mother didn’t have time to put us on her lap and give us the love and attention we would have liked. After all, there were ten of us kids. I was the fifth of five boys before any girls came along. We ate off the land; we had a garden, cows, and hogs. We killed deer and turkey all year long. There were big beautiful trees in our yard. There were live oaks out by the barn, but the elm trees were the most beautiful of all. We had two acres of land and one acre of it was a garden. My dad worked that garden everyday. It was really pretty. He had every kind of vegetable in the world.

Putting food on the table was a joint venture. Everyone worked together. We had two milk cows and every year or so there would be a calf. We’d raise the calf and we would kill it with the hogs in winter for food. We would build a big fire and fill tubs with water and put them on the fire to boil. We had a block and tackle on the big live oak tree in the back to pull the hogs up and dip them in the hot water. Then we would put the big animals on tables and scrape the hair off them until they were all pretty and white. After they were scraped clean, we helped my dad cut them all up. Mr. Schaub always helped us make the sausage. He always wanted to make some blood sausage but my mother would not let them because she said the Bible said we should not eat blood. My father and none of us would have anything to do with it, but Mr. Schaub would make some for himself anyway. He had to take it home because none of us would touch it. That was quite a job making all that sausage, and hanging and smoking all the hams and bacon. We made what we called cracklings. We took the pork fat and skin and boil it until it was all crisp and good. We didn’t have many things to snack on. I thought it was good eating.

We ate a lot of deer meat. We lived in the foothills of the Texas hill country right next to the Aue property. All us boys would go out and kill a deer every now and then. Bless Rudy Aue’s heart for letting us do that. Well, he didn’t really let us. We just did it! I know he knew we did it, but he never turned us in and he could have. He knew we were poor and that we were hungry. He looked after us and looked the other way. I’m sure that if his mother knew it she would have had a cow. But, she didn’t know it. God bless you, Rudy Aue. I’ll always respect him for looking after us.

We didn’t have any electricity or refrigeration so when we killed more deer than could be eaten in a day or two, my mother would fry up all the meat. She would put the fried meat in a jar and take hog grease that had been rendered from the hogs we killed and put that lard all around and all over the top of the meat. She would then take something, paraffin, and put on the top to seal the meat. We would have fresh meat whenever we needed it all year long.

My father was a very good father. I didn’t know how much I loved him or respected him until I was much older. Sometimes it takes a long time for us to realize the sacrifices our parents make for us. He worked so hard to take care of us, working at Camp Stanley, building and rebuilding our home, working a garden, killing hogs and turkeys, and more. One Saturday he was cutting wood for the stove and he accidentally cut all the fingers off his right hand. I don’t remember the whole story, but the family always told the story. We had an old Model T loaded with rocks that needed to be hauled off. My brothers had to remove enough of them to get my dad in and then they couldn’t crank up the car. They finally got it running and took my dad to the doctor in Boerne. Half of his thumb was also cut off, but the doctor was able to sew it back on. It might have been possible for the others to be sewn back on but they were left at the woodpile. This accident was a big let down for my dad. He had been hired as a carpenter at Camp Stanley, but with his hand missing, he was not allowed to go back to that job. He was given the job as janitor instead and he retired as janitor. I know that he regretted having to do that. He sacrificed himself to take care of us. It was great of him to do that for us. I wrote a letter to my dad, and to my mom, to apologize and to tell them how sorry I am that I was not always thankful for what they did for me. I do respect them and honor them as my parents.

My dad never drank. When someone offered him a beer, he would take it to be nice. Then he would drink it all up in one second. He would put the bottle down and that was it. He would not drink any more. His father drank too much; he was an alcoholic and I think that’s why my dad did not drink. I hate to say this, but it’s true. The first date I had with Rose Nell Feller was when my brother, Sid, had just returned home from the war. We were celebrating and I got drunk on wine. They had to pour water on me. I was about sixteen. I never drank any more wine. I hate wine. I could never touch it again. When we went to the dances at Three Way In, there was a man there who would buy us a some peach liquor, and we drank a little of that. We were bad boys once in a while. I remember once I told my mom that her pie made me sick. When I got home she emptied the whole thing on the floor. We tried to never let my dad know how bad we were. If he had caught us, it would have been over for us.

In the summer, all us boys would hire off to the farmers in the area. We shocked oats for Mr. Aue. We bailed hay and shocked oats for Mr. Shaw. We ran all his farm implements to take care of the baling and hauling the bales and everything that needed to be done. We worked with the two Elsworth girls. They shocked right along beside us in the fields. They were better than we were, man. We were kids and we wanted to play. We wanted to talk to them but they would not say anything to us. All the people wanted us to work for them, even after Archie and I came back from the navy. We worked hard and we sweated. We stayed from daylight until dark. They fed us a meal at noon, and then about three or four o’clock they fed us another meal. It was really nice. They treated us like we were their own when we were at their house. It was very good.

Later on, when I was a little older, I worked for Mr. Wood up there at his grocery store. I would pump gas, sack groceries, or do whatever needed doing. After I was there a few days, he told me I could eat anything I wanted. He knew he could trust me not to steal from him because my daddy always taught us not to steal. I could make sandwiches, open any box of cookies or anything I wanted and eat it. Delores, his daughter, and I would make me a big old job of ham and cheese with tomatoes and lettuce, and I’d be out there pumping gas, eating my sandwich. I didn’t loose any time. Mr. Wood would laugh and say, “Man, that boy can eat!” He knew that if he told us we could eat anything we wanted to eat, that in a couple of weeks we would be sick of it. And he was right! Then we started being picky. Delores would say, “Let’s open these, Pete,” and she’d open the package. She would eat one cookie and she’d give me one. Then she would take half of one and give me the rest and I had to eat the rest of the box. I was her slave, man! Mrs. Wood used to get on to her for being mean to me.

When I was seventeen, Archie and I joined the navy. That was the best thing that ever happened to me even though I almost got killed two or three times. When I came home from the navy, I got married. My two sisters, Lois and Barbara got married to Bobby Hay and Dale Keith. I had three wonderful children, Mike, Cindy, and Joanne. Life goes on!

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And a Creek Ran Through It
Hugh Asher

There used to be nothing but water in Leon Springs. The creek was running swift in summer and winter. There was watercress all over the top of it. There were tadpoles, fish; there was bass in there a foot and a half long down in the swifter water. It was beautiful! But in the seasons of rain the creek would be on the rise a lot. It would come up to that little bridge where we lived and right up to our gate. One time it came up eighteen inches into Rudy Aue’s store.

The creek was very useful to us. We used it for work and for play. We didn’t have running water in our house. We had to pack water to the house for drinking, bathing and cleaning. There were ten of us kids and that meant there was a lot of washing to be done. We lived up in a house above the springs at Mr. Aue’s. Sometimes us kids had to stay home from school to help my mama. Archie and I, and Sid and Donald before us, would go down to that spring and cut wood to build a fire. Then we would fill big tubs of water to put on the fire to boil. We helped mama rub the clothes on a rub board until they were clean. After they were clean we would rinse them in another couple of tubs of clean water. We would ring as much water out of them as we could and hang them on that big high fence of Mr. Aue’s. When the clothes were dry, we’d take them off the fence and carry them up the hill home. I don’t know how old I was then. I don’t know the dates. I just know I was a very young child, big enough to wash clothes and stuff. But I wasn’t too old.

We swam in that creek all year around. We even swam in the cold winter, even in February. We would build a big fire and go jump in the water. We came out blue. We’d get by the fire until we were warm and then go jump in again.

When I was a little older and the creek was on a rise, a bunch of us boys would walk a mile or two up the road. We’d get a big old log and get in that swift running creek and ride it all the way down. It’s a wonder we didn’t get killed. But, we did it!

One summer, the wasp built a big old nest over the water. We’d take a slingshot and shoot the nest and dive into the water. When we came up the wasp would be in our hair. What!
Mr. Shaw who lived on the old Altgelt place where the stage coach stop was ran a pipe from the springs where we used to do the washing to a big pool that was nine feet deep in the middle. Water ran into the pool, overflowed it and ran across the highway. We swam in that pool, also. We worked for Mr. Shaw at times. He was a nice man.

The creek drew us to the water and caused us trouble with my dad. He was the law and order type dad. What ever he said you better get on it. You better hop to quick because if you didn’t, the next step was the razor strap. Archie knew how to get out of trouble pretty good, but I usually got it. I have scars on my back now where he whipped me. But, I deserved every one of those whippings. He would tell us, “Don’t go to the creek! As soon as he would leave for work, into the creek we would go, man. We’d stay at the creek all day long. Our eyes would be all red from swimming all day long. Our mama would say, “You boys are going to get a whipping when your daddy comes home!” I can hear her now! And, we got it. As soon as my daddy came home, he would say, “You boys been to that creek swimming?” and we’d say, “No sir!” Just lying to him, man. And he just went ahead and got the razor strap and we got it. It was worth it because we swam all day and did everything a child would want to do, man.

When we were teenagers and worked shocking oats and baling hay in that field between the Shaw’s pool and Aue’s store in the summer time, We would shock and bale all around that field. When we got to the side where the B29 Inn is, we’d crawl over the fence and get us a Pepsi Cola if we had the money, if they had paid us. We’d then work back to the other side where that pool of Mr. Shaw’s was and jump in and go swimming for a while. Then we’d go back to shocking oats. It was a fun time in summer, plus work.

Now the creek is dry because everyone has pumped the water from the Edward’s Aquifer. It’s dry except when it rains and flash flooding comes. And then it’s dry again.

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Adventures of the Toms and Hucks of Leon Springs
Hugh Asher

Burr haircuts, short pants, bare footed, no shirts, we were like wild boys. That’s what Mr. Whitehead called us when he would see us. “There’s them wild boys!” That’s what he would say when he would see us at Leon Springs in the town. Children now a days just don’t know what it is to live like we lived when I was a kid. We did all kinds of crazy things, had all kinds of fun adventures, played all kinds of little tricks. Now a days, they just rob a bank!

My three older brothers and I learned very early about hunting and trapping. We were very poor and my daddy would shoot wild turkeys to help keep food on the table. We had an old two-story frame house and in our yard we kept some turkeys. Others turkeys would fly in to play with our turkeys, or talk to them, or whatever and Daddy would see them and he would shoot a turkey right out of the window. We’d hear that gun go off and we would be out of that house like a shot. We’d all run down to that bottom and we would be dragging that big old sucker home as fast as we could. Good eating was coming up!

Daddy never killed a deer I don’t think in his entire life. He just killed us turkeys. But, he taught all us boys to hunt, and we killed many a deer to put meat on the table. One time my friend Tunnie Flores and I were going to see our girlfriends. I was driving my dad’s 1934 or 35 Ford up the back roads toward Boerne. We saw two does in a field and we killed them and put them into the trunk of the car. When we got to my girlfriend’s house, blood started dripping out of the trunk onto the ground. Her daddy said, “ What you boys got in there?” We didn’t think the blood would leak out. We just said, “Aw! Nothing!” He knew what we had. We had to eat, man. We didn’t kill those does to be mean. We did it because we were hungry.

We used to go hunting with our dog, Collie at night. He was very obedient and very smart. He took care of everything. He watched everything. He didn’t bark on the trail. He’d go right up to a tree and go “burrr” That’s it! When he did that we knew we had something. He’d have a ring tail cornered in the tree. We see him in the moonlight and shoot him with a twenty-two. Pow! We took the furs from the animals we shot and sold them for money. We used that money to give to my mom to buy shoes, clothing, or whatever we needed. Whatever we made, we gave the money to my mother and she made do with whatever she had. She used it to get whatever she needed to take care of us.
I used to go hunting with my Uncle Doc. He drank a lot and would take a fifth of whisky, pour half of it out and fill the bottle with water and sugar in it to dilute it. He would take Archie and me and a couple of dogs, that old hound dog, Rufus, and another, I think his name was Blue across that track by Wood’s Store and into Mr. Pheiffer’s pasture. We would hunt from nine o’clock at night until two, three, or four in the morning. We’d come in at about daylight and have a whole pack of ‘coons and ringtails. We’d shoot them out of the trees in the moonlight. Sometimes we’d have to shake and shake the trees to get them out so the dogs could get them. We sold the furs for money to give to my mom.

Uncle Doc had some kind of car that had a rumble seat in it. Instead of a trunk that raised up, you pulled the trunk back and out. It made a rumble seat. He’d put those dogs of his in that seat and take us to see my grandma. She lived in a little old house with flowers all around it over by what we then called “Mexican town.” We’d go in to see my grandma and those old dogs would jump out of the rumble seat and start fighting. Boom! Boom! Boom!

Mr. Altgelt had a lot of white leghorn chickens. I hate to say it, but my friends and I would take some of his chickens. We would take a frying pan and some lard along with his chickens and take them up there in the woods where no one would see us. We were like wild people. We’d just skin those chickens. We would pull the skin and the feathers and everything off and fry ‘em up, right there. We were hungry, man. We wanted something to eat.

When we were younger, we used to set traps in that same area where we would later fry the chickens. We caught a bobcat one night. He wasn’t dead and we were teasing him, sticking him with a stick. When we went home to get the twenty-two to shoot him, we discovered that he was hanging on the trap with only a grizzle of one toe. We could have been killed, man.

There were bobcats, ‘coon, ringtails, everything out there in those woods. Sometimes I would go hunting out there all by myself. I’d take me a sausage or deer meat sandwich or something and put it in my pocket or under my shirt and a single shot twenty-two to kill a turkey or a deer during the daytime. I’d go from my house over the mountain, I mean the big one, and over a couple of others hills to what they called Cherry Springs in the Altgelt place. I’d lay by those springs for hours waiting for a turkey to come up. Sometimes I would wait two or three hours for them to come. Finally, I could smell them coming, I could smell them, man! They would come up with their old blue heads sticking up. You could only shoot one. You shoot once, and that’s it. They’re gone! That’s it! Sometimes, I could smell a deer coming.

Mr. Max Toepperwein was a crack-shot rifle shooter. He was one of the best rifle shots in the whole world. He had a rifle range over behind the school on top of that big hill. When he was shooting, sometimes the bullets would snap or whatever. He used every kind of bullet you would want to name. When they would snap or whatever he would drop them. We’d take a paper sack and pick them all up. We’d have a whole sack of bullets and no one knew we had them. When my family and Tunnie’s family made sausage, Tunnie and I would take five or six rings from my dad’s and four or five rings from Tunnie’s dad. We’d go get our friends and girl friends and take them out to the pasture at night in the moonlight and build a big fire. We’d have a big sausage roast and a lot of kissy-poo. We didn’t have any firecrackers or fire works and so we’d take that sack of bullets and throw the whole sack full in the fire. And the bullets would go off. Ping! Ping! Ping! It’s a wonder we didn’t get killed! We just didn’t think. We were young guys wanting to have fun. At the spur of the moment we just did it.

My dad had a lot of trouble with us boys. Right, next to our barn where daddy kept hay and all kinds of stuff, right outside the gate was a grave. We always wanted to dig that grave up, but my daddy wouldn’t let us. He told us that a long time ago there was a horse thief stealing everyone’s horses and someone shot him. My daddy didn’t shoot him. but someone did and buried him right there by our barn. We never did get to dig that grave up.

When Daddy would leave for work, all us kids would have a free for all in the house. We’d have at it, man. We’d lock my mama up in one room and go for it. Sometimes, we would move all the furniture out in the yard, we didn’t have a lot, but we’d move it and make a dancing room out of the living room. We’d go get Susie Flores, Helen Altgelt, and all them others that lived down there and we’d try to dance. We were practicing up for the Saturday night dance at Three Way Inn Dance Hall. It was a big old dance hall where they would pull a pick up truck to it and pull the top off on some kind of rail. There would be moonlight and dancing under the stars. Daddy wouldn’t let us go unless our grandma would agree to go with us as a chaperone. My grandma smoked cigars and dipped snuff, Garrett Snuff in a jar, a little brown looking jar. So, we’d talk her into going, but she wouldn’t get out of the car. She said she could see us well enough in the moonlight with the top off the dance hall. We’d buy her a soda water or something and take it out to her. She would just be sitting out there in the car.

After Daddy built a second floor to our house, us boys had to sleep upstairs. We didn’t have an indoor bathroom and we had to go out to the outhouse to go to the bathroom. It even had a crescent moon carved in it. It was pretty primitive. We always had a Sears Roebuck catalog to use to wipe our tails on. When we needed to use the restroom at three o’clock in the morning when it was cold, sometimes even sleeting, you had to go, honey. We didn’t want to go downstairs and all the way out to the privie, so we would just pee out the window. It would run down and you could see the pee on the screen in front of the house. We did it until our dad caught sight of it. He busted some butts. That was our life.

One time my daddy and mother went to visit my grandma and left us boys at home. Sid, and Donald and all them bigger boys down the road were there at our house riding their bicycles down the Boerne Stage Road. Sid was acting smart and he swerved at me and hit my leg. They had to take me to the Robert B. Green hospital to get me fixed up. Both bones were broken. It really hurt. I still remember screaming.

We used to take a purse, a pretty shiny lady’s purse. We would fill it up with that real green gooey cow manure. Then we’d snap it shut and wipe it all clean looking on the outside. We would take that purse down to that little bridge down the road and lay it down. Then we would get under the bridge and wait for a car to come by. A car would come by, stop, and get the purse. They would get back in the car and open the purse. How we would laugh when they would throw the purse out the window. That’s some of the things we did when we were children.

Mr. Durler had a ranch near us and he raised Shetland ponies. They were wild when he would get them and he would let us boys ride them to break them in. There were probably ten or fifteen of us, the Ashers, the Flores, the Nuetzes, the Pattons, the Lefrevres, the Moreaus, and others. He would give each of us a pony to ride. We’d take those ponies and ride everywhere. You could see all of us with the dust a flying behind us. There we were, each with our own pony, riding those poor devils. Shetlands are small, but here we’d come! Those were the fun times.

There are other times, quieter times I remember. I’ll remember them all my life. In the summer when it was hot, a lot of us boys would walk the roads of Leon Springs, down Boerne Stage Road, across to the Aue’s over the rail road tracks to the boys who lived in the houses over there, It was so hot our bare feet would burn on the bottom. We’d walk right through the grass with all the grass burrs. I remember walking through the sand. It was so soft and felt so good on my feet. It was so good to be walking in the summer time in the beautiful sun. In the evenings we heard the crickets and the whip-poor-wills. You could hear the crickets at night and see a lot of candle bugs light up at night. In the evenings, just at dark, a bird would come out. It would be a whip-poor-will and it would go “zip mad a widow, zip mad a widow, zip mad a widow!” At least that’s what we thought it was saying. But, he was really making that sound with his whistle. He was whistling. I’ll never forget those calls my whole life.

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That Little Rock Schoolhouse
Hugh Asher

My name is Hugh Asher and I went to that little rock schoolhouse at Leon Springs in the late 1930’s and into the 1940’s. I was there during the entire WWII years. I remember we had three classrooms. The first, second, and third grade were in one room, the fourth, fifth, and sixth in one, and the seventh, eighth and ninth in still another. The principal of the school always taught the older children.

It was one mile from my house to the school and I always walked, usually with some of my brothers and sisters. It didn’t matter if it was hot, freezing, or raining, we walked to school; we didn’t miss many days. The only days we missed were when my daddy needed some help, or my mother needed help with the washing or something. There were ten of us kids and we had to help at home. Our biggest problem was getting everyone to school without one of us having to return home. We had a pet deer we had raised and it would sometimes follow us to school and sometimes our dog would follow us. The teachers always made one of us take our pets back home. They didn’t want our animals in the schoolyard.

In the mornings, we would line up in three rows. After we said the Pledge of Allegiance, we sang America and God Bless America. Then we would have the Lord’s Prayer. We did this every morning, either inside the building or outside by the flagpole. I don’t understand why our children can’t have that now. It is devastating to our country. America! We’ve forgotten what America is!

When I was a little older, my job before school was to take our two cows and our neighbor, Mr. Flores’ cows out to the pasture to eat oats during the day. Mr. Flores had an old dun mare named Dunnie and he would let me use that mare to herd the cows to the field. Then I would ride that horse on to school. On the way, I would always pass Mr. Flores’ youngest grandson who was still in diapers, and everyday he would say, “Where you going, Pete? You goin’ cool!”

After school, I would ride the horse back to my house and let her loose in the yard to eat. In the evenings, my little brothers and sisters always wanted to ride her. All I had to do was whistle, and she’d come up to the house and let those kids ride. She was so gentle that they could hang all over her, even hang on to her tail.

My favorite teacher was Mrs. Irma Van der Stratton. She came from Boerne to Leon Springs to teach us. I will never forget her. She was the most elegant lady. She had white hair that was sometimes kind of blue from some rinse she used in it. She was very well mannered and she taught me a lot of the manners I have carried with me all my life. She was very intelligent and I learned much from her. I wish I could thank her and tell her how wonderful, how beautiful, how beautiful a person she was, and how much she meant to me.

We were always playing games with her. There was a big pot bellied stove to heat the room with. Mrs. Van der Stratton would say, “Put some more wood on the fire, Mr. Asher.” I would put a lot of wood in the fire and the whole stove would get red. Then she would say, “I think it is getting hot in here!” and she would open up all the windows.

She would let us shoot rats in the attic with what we called our “nigger” shooters. Now they call them slingshots. We kept them in our pockets or hanging around out necks. She let us do that until one day Bobby Nuetze turned the light off the flashlight we were using and one of the boys fell through the two by fours. He was hanging right over her desk and that was the end of our shooting rats in the attic.

We used to take snakes and put them in her desk. We put red ants in a jar and then let them loose on the school floor. We did all kind of crazy things in school. We were allowed to go all the way down to Mr. Aue’s store at recess to buy candy for a nickel, or one or two pennies.

When I was a teenager, I would walk over all the land in between our house and school. I’d catch coons and ringtails. One morning, I caught a skunk. When I got to school, Mrs. Van der Stratton ran me off from school because I stunk. Phew! Yuck! She got me out of there and I had to go home. I didn’t mind. It was a joy, really. I didn’t much like school. I was a rebellious child. So were a lot of other boys in my class. I think it was because we didn’t have as much as everybody else. We kind of felt deprived, maybe.

At Halloween, there would be a play or something at the school. Some of us were never picked to play a part and we really rebelled. While everyone was in the school house, a lot of us boys would take a tow sack of corn cobs to stuff in car mufflers and a bar of P&G soap to soap every window in the whole place, except for Mr. Woods. He was the sheriff and when he would see us, he would say, “Hey boys! Come here! This is my car. Don’t touch it! And, we didn’t. But we got everyone else’s. We were like wild boys. When we got through, we would pull the master switch so all the lights would go out and we’d run for the mountains. It was rebellious, but we did it and we called it fun.

One time, we soaped all the windows of the school and we put sheep dip all over the boy’s restroom, the girl’s restroom, and all over the porch of the school. Sheep dip is just about the foulest and smelliest thing we could find. When the teachers arrived the next morning they had to let school out for the day. The smell was terrible, man! When they caught us they made us clean up the whole mess.

We had to work at school. There were no janitors. At about 2:30, the teacher would pick about two boys and two girls to go out and clean the rest rooms. They were not in the building in those days. They were in a little building outside the schoolhouse. The boys would clean the boys and the girls would clean the girls. Of course, there would always be a little kissy-poo in the middle of our time out there. There was also a little woodshed and we had to bring in the wood for the pot bellied wood stove. We also had to keep the grass cut out in front so that the teachers could get to their car.

It wasn’t all kissy-poo at the school. We had our fights, too. We used to play marbles and one boy would steal our marbles. We were always bare footed. He would put our marbles between his toes and walk away with them. I had a fight with him everyday, man! Boom! Boom! Right in the mouth! One day, Tunnie had a fight with him and Tunnie hit him about seven times on his head. That boy went home with a big old goose egg on his head. Too bad!

We were the poor people in that community. The Ashers, the Nuetzes, the LeFevres, we were the poor outcasts. We didn’t have nothing! We scratched the ground! There were a few, however, who had the money. Among those I went to school with were Gail McDonald, whose family started that big rock quarry out there close to where Fiesta Texas is now. Senator Franklin Spears was in my class at school. He used to trade sandwiches with me at noon. I always had deer meat sandwiches and he had big beautiful sandwiches of cheese, lettuce, and tomato. He didn’t like his and I didn’t like mine, so we switched. I have a lot of memories from that school.

I finished ninth grade out there at Leon Springs. There was no high school. I went to Tech High School in San Antonio for a while. There was no transportation and I had to hitch hike, so I quit and I went into the navy when I was seventeen.

Finally, the school district built John Marshall High School. It was too late for me. Mr. Hugh Watson, whom I’m named after, was one of the first members on the board. When his children got of age, he made sure they got one.

The old school is gone now. It has been replaced with a big school that doesn’t look like it belongs in Leon Springs. It looks like it belongs to the Dominion that has been built on the very same land I used to hunt and trap as a child.

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Seeds of Life
Hugh Asher

Oats, vegetables, and the seeds of education were not the only seeds sown in that little town of Leon Springs. The people in the Leon Springs Presbyterian Church, the only church close by, planted seeds of eternal life in many a heart. Indeed, much mature fruit sown by that little church is still in a continual harvest in many congregations, in many different denominations, throughout the world.

Friends from my age group and I enjoyed many opportunities offered by that church. Ruby Lee and Betty Jean Johnson, Tommy Terrell, Roy Moreau, Dave Erfurt, Franky and Jimmy Nuetze, Floyd and Everett Patton, were some and there were many more that I have not named. I remember a young man coming from out of town with his wife to be our preacher. His name was Frank Walker. He had Hollywood mufflers on his car and we’d all be in the B29 Inn shooting pool and he would come in and shoot pool with us. He and his wife were very beautiful people and he was a good minister. He got all us young people involved in what they called the Christian Endeavor. They not only taught us about God, but they had all kinds of parties and stuff. Every Friday night we would all meet at the church, or at Mrs. Self’s house. Her sister, Miss Helen Leach, lived with her and taught us many things. They lived right across the street from Franklin Spear’s house, where the Dominion is now. It was a very good place to meet people and have fun as children. We always had a lot of snacks and good things to eat. The preacher got us involved in boxing and a man, Mr. Blount, came from San Antonio to teach us. We all bought boxing gloves, and man, you got your head knocked off up there. Someone would say something to Mr. Blount, and he’d say, “Come on!, Let’s go!” and Boom! You had it, man!

We had hayrides. We’d get Mr. Aue’s tractor and we’d pull a big old trailer loaded with hay. We’d all get out girlfriends, pile up on that hay and have a good old time. Those were the day, man.

We also learned much about the Bible from home. My mother always read the Bible to us. My daddy would make us all sit down in the living room, there were ten of us, and he held law and order while my mom read. He’d say, “Listen up!” and listen up we did. My daddy would kneel by the bed every night and then I thought he was foolish. But, he was asking God for sustenance and provision for all his children. And, God did it! God came in every manner and everyday.

When I came home from leave after I was in the navy, my sister Lois took me to Lock Hill School. I had gone to school there myself when I was in the first grade when we lived on the dairy farm with my Uncle George. I met Teresa there and I fell in love with her. I will never forget it! She came out to my car and we talked and talked. I tried to look her up the next day, but I missed her. I hear from my mom that she was pretty upset that I had missed her. But, we finally got together and she wrote me while I was in the navy. When I came home we married there in that little church.

The church was very instrumental in my life. Eventually, I became an elder there and I served on the board for thirteen years. While I was an elder, we put a cross up on the hill behind the church. We built a thirty-five foot cross with a fourteen foot cross member. We put lights on it, and built a road up to it. It was very beautiful. At night, or especially in foggy weather, that cross looked as if it was suspended from the sky with a string by God because at those times you couldn’t see the mountain behind it. We put it there so that the truckers and the people that passed by would know that Jesus Christ is the answer. Jesus is not on the cross; the cross is empty. We wanted them to know that Christ is still with us today.

I had started the project of putting that cross on the hill, and one day I was up there all alone. It was a very hot day in July or August and. I had been working all day long. I was just finishing up when I looked down to pick up a piece of brush and there was a big rattlesnake coiled up looking right at me. He had probably been there all day and I had been stepping over him; I just hadn’t seen him. I ran as fast as I could to the minister’s house, Mr. Schaeffer, to get a twenty-two to kill him with. When I got back he was gone. I guess he is still there, or his grandchildren. I didn’t learn until later when I started reading the Scriptures that God said he would put his angels in charge, and I know that the angels of heaven were holding that rattlesnake’s mouth so that he could not bite me. If he had of bitten me, he would have killed me.

The cross is gone now. I was really upset about that. Someone bought the property from Mr. Aue and took it down. There’s a house up there now.

My dad always prayed that one of his sons would give his time to the Lord. I know in my heart that I’m the one he picked. Maybe, not the one my dad picked, but the Lord picked me. As a young man I knew my calling was to work for the Lord. I knew it early in my life when I went to that Presbyterian Church. I knew it! Everything I did, the Lord blessed it, everything except my marriages. They were all failures, every one of them. I wish they were not but they were. I don’t have the answer, even now. I know that some of it had to do with my attitude, a lot of it. But the things I had learned from my father could not be accepted by my wives. I know that and I don’t blame them. But, that was all I knew. That was what I had learned. I had been toughened. I had to be tough. I thought the way my daddy made us behave was the way my children had to behave. I thought that was the way I had to run my life. I was cold. I’m older now and more seasoned and more loving. I had to go to a lot of counseling and had to get down on my knees in prayer to get where I am now. I thank God for his help. The seeds that were planted by my parents and nurtured by that little Presbyterian Church are still growing and producing fruit to this day.

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Memories
Hugh Asher

When I worked for Mr. Wood, every once in a while he would take us to the movies in Boerne. It was really nice! I remember seeing the movie, How Green Was My Valley. It was very emotional and I remember how mean they were to that kid. My life was a lot like that. How green was my valley!

The old home place is still there. It looks pretty much the same, but they have prettied it up some. The garden is no longer planted. Sometimes, I pull my car up to the gate and big tears well up in my eyes as I remember all the things that went on in my life there. I recall the hogs hanging in the trees. I remember making the sausage and the day we shot the old hog, Roam. He was wounded and running all over the place with all of us kids chasing after him trying to stab him. I remember the day my daddy was coming home from work at Camp Stanley and the brakes on that old Ford didn’t work and he went through the brand new gate he had just built and it splattered all over the place, just like in the movies. He was so upset and so embarrassed. I remember taking my own children, Mike, Cindy, and Joanne over to the old home place to visit Grandpa and Grandma. We’d always have fried chicken on Sundays. Grandpa loved those kids so much and he missed them so much when they moved away. He’d come over to my house to do some work and Joanne would help him and he’d pay her a nickel. She thought that was so cool. Joanne would go out in the yard with Taipei, her cat and she’d say, “Oh God!” She would be talking to God with the cat on her shoulder. That cat was something else. I bought Mike a pigeon and was just warning him not to put it down or the cat would get it. Too late! The cat got it. I cherish all those memories.

There have been a lot of changes at Leon Springs. The Dominion, built for the wealthy, the Leon Springs School, rebuilt to look like it belongs in the Dominion, Mr. Schaub’s house turned into a gift shop, Mrs. Saley’s house into a restaurant, and Rudy’s Store into a big barbecue restaurant. Now, there’s a big dance hall, a lot of shops, restaurants, a bank, and a big HEB store. Leon Springs! It still looks good and it even smells good when I drive through there. Leon Springs! How Green Is My Valley!

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Memories of the Leon Springs School
Lois Asher Widner

I went to the Leon Springs School for years starting when I was six. I loved the school and I met some nice friends like: Edna Blanchard Elsworth, with whom I have been friends with all these years, Carolyn Pheiffer, Harry Harris, Donny Gray, the Fator children, the Flores family, and the Neutze boys.

One time, Jimmy Neutze was in my class. When I was going to sit down, he pulled the chair out from under me and caused me to sit down hard on the floor. I didn’t care for him the rest of the school year. He teased me about wearing nail polish on my fingers. He said, “Why do you wear that? Are you trying to cover up the dirt under your nails?”

In the 1946-1947 school year, I did not miss any days and was not tardy for the entire year and was given a certificate.

We walked to school and back home again. Some days it would be raining and Mrs. Altgelt would come by and pick up her two girls but she wouldn’t let us get in her car. The paper man that delivered the San Antonio Light would always stop and pick us up if it were raining and take us home.

My teacher, Mrs. Fox, used to tell me that if she had a daughter, she would like her to be just like me.

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Treasured Memories of Leon Springs School
Constance Flores Staggs

I went to Leon Springs School from the first grade in 1939, through the sixth grade in 1945. In seventh grade I went to The Little Flower Catholic school in San Antonio. The following year disaster struck our family. My father died and our house burned to the ground with no insurance. Then I went back to Leon Springs School and took the eight and ninth grade in the same year. After that I went back to Little Flower Catholic High School in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. Wow, I really had to study hard there.

I do have many memories of my years at Leon Springs School. I often think of how kind, caring, loving and dedicated teachers that Alma and Hulda Geiger were. They surely were called from above for their profession. We all loved them very much. Alma Geiger was my teacher. I was so shy and scared on my first day of school that I wouldn’t sit in a desk alone, so she put me in the desk with my brother, Tunnie, for about a week. That gave me comfort and made me feel very secure and special. Eventually, Nadine Taylor and I were in the top of the reading class. We were always competing, especially in reading and spelling. Miss Geiger took me home with them for a weekend, and took me to see the Brackenridge Park. I was so excited since that was the first time for me to visit the park and zoo.

I can still see the big racetrack by the school. One morning Franky Neutze rode his horse to school. Norma Lou Fator and I rode the horse around the racetrack. For some reason the horse spooked and kept running around and around the track. I was behind and holding on for dear life. The horse finally ran into the boys’ rest room. We jumped off scared to death.

Since first grade, I remember my best friends were Lois Asher, Nadine Taylor, LaVerne Wood, Edna Blanchard, Stella Valdez, Mollie Jo Crowell, and Norma Lou Fator. Since I am now seventy-two, I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone. Edna Blanchard had a diary that we all wrote in.

I remember Mr. Burrow and Mrs. Fox who were the principals, and how we used to say the pledge to the flag. Our teachers always taught us about being patriotic. During World War Two, the soldiers would have marching drills on the road in front of the school. The teachers let us all go out and watch them march by us. We would always give them a big cheer and wave to them. Some of them bought candy at Rudy Aue’s store and threw it to us.

On cold winter days, I can still see the big black wood stove in the corner of the room. It always felt so warm and cozy in our classroom. I also remember Miss Geiger’s handwritten ABC’s above the large blackboards.

My experiences in Leon Springs School and my many friends were a treasure that I will never forget. We were so fortunate to have had such dedicated teachers, who not only taught us, but also showed us so much love and care in so many ways. I shall always remember how happy and proud I was when I was chosen to be valedictorian for our eighth grade graduation.

When I think of how shy and insecure I was as a young child, I am so grateful to have had such caring and dedicated teachers at Leon Springs School who helped me to overcome my insecurities. I am enclosing a copy of my certificate for being neither absent nor tardy for the year of 1944.

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The Way I Remember Leon Springs School
Mary Lou (Tinkie) Flores Wood

I remember Leon Springs School very well, at least in my mind this is the way it was. I remember the rock bathroom being around to the outside of the school building. I also remember the big stove in the room where the stage was and the cloakroom.

In the first, second, and third grade classroom there was a little room that connected to the stage. It was called the sick room and had a little bed in it.

I remember the Geiger sisters teaching us. Once when I was in the second or third grade they took me home with them for the weekend. They took me to the library. That was the first time I had ever been in the public library. I was in awe of it. Miss Geiger put me up on a big bear or lion, or some kind of statue of that kind that was at the bottom of the wide steps going up into the library.

I remember having a lunchroom later, but I don’t remember eating in it. Perhaps we took our trays into the classroom to eat.

The Christmas play was a big event there. I remember all of us making paper chains to decorate the tree.

Barbara Asher was my best friend, cousin, and playmate. Glen Feller was the one I had a mad crush on. I thought he was the cutest thing on earth.

I left Leon Springs when I went to Catholic School in the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth grades. I went to North Side High School, now John Marshall High School, in the eleventh grade. Then I got married.

As for the Leon Springs community, I remember the gas station there run by Robert Pittman, my sister Ruby’s husband. I also remember Rudy Aue’s Store. We would go by there after school. Once in a while, not often, we would get candy. Later, when I was a teenager, I remember the B29 Inn Dance Hall. It seemed so large. Paul Petch, the father of Betty and Joyce Ann Petch owned it. My sister, Connie still writes to Betty, who now lives in West Virginia.

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Memories of Leon Spring School
Dorothy Hill Hoy

I started first grade at Leon Springs School in 1935. Miss Viola George Wilson was our teacher. The last I heard she was still living in a nursing home in Boerne. Sarah Altgelt, Archie Asher, Emmeline Klar, Jane Moreau, and I believe Bobby Neutze all started first grade with me.

Most of us will agree we have “Happy Memories”. I wonder if the young people of today can share good times and good memories with people they went to grammar school with.

There were no school buses and apparently no child labor laws. Our principal at that time was Elsie Pickett Sommers and she had us pick up rocks at recess time and make flower beds. Rocks multiply, you know!

We did win the blue ribbon several years for our beautiful school grounds. I can remember how excited we all were when the Bookmobile came. We were all good readers—that was our entertainment.

Many long lasting friendships were made in that three room school house.

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Lasting Memories
Polly Anna Patton

I was in the second grade at the Leon Springs School when my little brother, Doug, Jr. was about to be born. Daddy called the school to notify me and they pulled me into the first grade room to give me the news. I was so excited that they had let me know that he was going to be born. I had a name all picked out for Dougie. He was going to be John Anthony. If the baby was going to be a girl, she was going to be Melanie Kay. But, that didn’t work out. He became Doug, Jr. What was so ironic about the situation was that everyone felt so sorry for me. Uncle “Moine” had a pig, so he named the pig Melanie Kay Pig. And then, about the same time, Melanie Feller was born and Glenn and Jaunell chose to name her Melanie Kay Feller. .

One time when I was in 2nd grade all the second grade girls and some of the third grade girls were in a lot of trouble. I think it was Brenda Flores who brought a bottle of perfume to school. At recess we all put it on and Mrs. Iris Hawkins wouldn’t let us back in the classroom. She made us all sit outside instead of attending class for the rest of the day.

One of my fondest memories of school happened at recess when I was in the first grade. We had a wooden swing on the playground and I was sitting on the swing, swinging away when the bell rang that it was time to go in, I heard an airplane and as I looked up, it was going right over my head. I thought at the time, “Oh, I wish I could fly away, just fly away like that plane.” I think to this day that that is the reason I joined the Confederate Airforce with my interest in aviation. The Confederate Airforce is a volunteer group for the preservation of WWII History of Aviation.

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MEMORIES FROM THE 1920s AND THE 1930s
1929-1937
Playing Marbles
Maurice Reagan

One of the games we played at Leon Springs School was “marbles.” We would play marbles at any opportune time; like before school took up; at recess; or at lunch. I think we had kind of a “marble season”; or maybe we just tapered off playing as the days passed; or when we just got tired of the game.
Playing “for keeps” was strictly forbidden – so I don’t think there was much of that.

The hard dry ground on the school ground made a good place to play marbles. We would clear off the rocks and sticks from a flat area, and then make an oval shaped ring in which to place the marbles. To make the ring, we would take a stick and scribe an arc in the dirt. Then we would get on the opposite side of that arc and scribe another arc – like so .

Then each person playing would contribute a marble for the ring – and the marbles would be lined up in a straight line in the ring. Then we scribed a straight “starting” line in the dirt, about eight feet from the ring. Shooting order was determined by tossing our “shooter” marbles at the starting line. The person whose marble landed closest to the line was first to start, next closest was second, etc.

The first shooter would then get behind the line – on his knees – knuckles down – and shoot his marble as close to the ring as possible. Then the rest of the players would take their turn. The object was to knock the marbles out of the ring – and sometimes it took two or three shoots in successive turns to get close enough to accurately hit the marbles and knock them out. The person who knocked out the most marbles won the game. Also, if I remember correctly, each player could kill off the other players by shooting at and hitting their “shooter” marbles. Each player hit like this was knocked out of the game.

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The Small Choir
Maurice Reagan

I think it was Miss Palmie who started out small choir at the Leon Springs School. I can’t remember how many students we had in the choir – maybe as high as twelve. We had no uniforms like all groups have today. That would have been too expensive for that day and time. Times were hard! Miss Palmie did make up a bunch of identical paper patterns for capes, and had each of us take a pattern home to our moms and have our moms make red capes. Of course, as they turned out, we had red capes – but each seemed to be a different shade of red. I think my mom got red dye and dyed white cloth.

I liked to sing and knew most all the words to many of the popular songs of the day. I was real bashful though – and being in the front row, I didn’t have any place to hide. When the choir was first started, I was real self-conscious. In one of the early practice sessions, my eyes really started watering. Miss Palmie saw this and said: “Maurice, What are you crying about?” And I quickly said: “I am not crying!” “This singing just hurts my eyes!”

As I remember, our choir used to sing in some of our own school programs; and also at Lock Hill and Leon Valley, during “County Meets” for sports and recitations. I can’t remember if the choirs were judged or not.

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Playing “Tops”
Maurice Reagan

One of our fun games at Leon Springs School was “Top” spinning. This wasn’t just a quiet game of gently spinning the tops. It was a tough, dangerous game not meant for “sissies.” We would first have to modify and beef up any newly acquired tops. We would remove the short dull spinner from the top, and then replace that spinner with an 8- penny nail-driven tightly into the top. Then we would cut off the nail, leaving an extra long spinner. Then with a file, we would sharpen the point. Then we would “notch” the new spinner so as to hold the string in place as we tightly wrapped the string on the top.

We prepared the “game place” by scribing a 3- foot circle on the ground with a stick. The object was to spin your top in the circle and hope it would travel on out of the circle. If it didn’t come out of the circle; or if the top failed to spin, you had to leave your top in the circle for everyone else to “shoot at” with their tops. If someone knocked your top out of the ring, you could spin it again.

Throwing your top at the ring and at the other tops was not a gentle sissy thing. With the string tied to the base of your middle finger, you would first wrap the string “super tight” around the top. Then you would place the top securely in your throwing hand, with the spinner up! The top was grasped tightly between the first two fingers and the thumb with the point slanted slightly back and left of vertical (throwing with the right hand). Then you would throw the top, over-handed, as hard as you could. The top would land point down on your target (maybe another top), ‘singing” real loud because of the high rate of spin. The more your own top was scarred up with dimples and holes from being hit in the ring, the more it would sing!

I don’t remember anyone getting injured from being hit with those sharp tops. The high potential for accidents was certainly there. I guess we learned quickly to keep out of the line of fire.

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Painful Punishment
Maurice Reagan

It was the last day of school, and I was just completing my seventh year at Leon Springs School. Old Leon Creek, close by, had just been on a tare from recent rains, and the creek was still “up” real good.

Lots of us kids arrived at school early, as usual, before the teachers; and the temptation to go down to the creek was just too much for a lot of us boys. So, we left the schoolyard to look at the creek. Most of the boys then went swimming. After all, there really wasn’t much going on at school on the last day!

Well, the teacher (Principal, I guess) finally got to school and found the boys gone. So, the teacher, feeling responsible, came looking for us. We were all scattered up and down the creek, and it wasn’t obvious as to exactly where we were.
I don’t know where the teacher looked first, but when she drove across the railroad track at the old school crossing, she broke her car. It was a pretty rough crossing and I think she must have broken a spring on that car.

Well, that up-set her terribly and that started a chain of events that cost her job and reputation; and cost us boys a severe beating! I didn’t even go swimming, but that didn’t get me a lesser sentence. Each of us had to find and cut our own switch or stick, which the teacher was to use to punish us (and we couldn’t fudge and pick small switches).
I must have gotten at least 10 lashes, maybe more – across my back. Before the teacher gave me my lashes, she said it was going to hurt her more than it hurt me. I do think that ordeal was really hurting her – and I felt she was truly sorry she had started the punishment.

I never told Mom and Dad about the beating because I was told that if I ever got a whipping at school, I would get another at home! The other kids did tell their parents though, and there was a big-to-do about it all, and the teacher was summarily fired!

If you ever noticed in movies, where guys were given “40 lashes”, “tied to the mast” – and their backs showed all those bloody stripes -; well that’s how my back looked – and I had a hard time hiding my wounds from my parents. It was painful to wear clothes.

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Misunderstood Class Assignment
Maurice Reagan

Our teachers at Leon Springs School were all great! They must have been great because I learned very much in those eight grades. I always strived to make good grades on all assignments. And usually made good grades because of my efforts. But you know, there was one assignment which I will never forget, that I was given an undeserved grade of “D”. If I had been grading my own work, I would truly have given myself an “A” on that assignment. I never did discuss the grade with Miss Palmie, the teacher, so I never knew the reason for the low grade. The only reason I could think of was, surely, I had misunderstood the teacher.

The geography assignment by Miss Palmie as I heard it was, (quote); “Next week, I am going to have you: (1) draw a map of the United States, (2) draw in all the 48 states, and (3) write in the capitols of each of the 48 states, all from memory. I am telling you this now so that you will study and be prepared to do this”. (End quote)

As I listened attentively to the teacher, I understood the assignment to be: “study and prepare to do all the above, from memory. I.e. – accurately draw the U.S. maps draw in and properly place all the states, and write in all the state capitols”.
So I studied and worked hard, committing to memory – all the sizes, shapes, locations, proportions of all the states, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, special features, etc.; so that I could in fact, from memory, without any visual reference to a map, or any other aid, draw a good map of the United States, with all 48 states and their capitols identified. That took a week and many practice sessions of drawing maps from memory. All that study paid off and I was ready on test day!

When I was graded “D” on my map, I was real disappointed. I don’t think I ever checked to see what the other kids done, and being a subservient young lad, I am sure I did not ask the teacher “Why”. So, I never knew why.
Maybe Miss Palmie meant that we just memorize the capitols, and trace the United States and state maps – who knows!

No matter how I was judged on this, I feel that my feat was remarkable! How many people in the whole world could ever have done such a task? Think about it! – Drawing a map of the United States - from memory! Wow!

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Sports and the County Meet
Maurice Reagan

I can’t remember how many different schools were a part of our school district in the mid 1930’s, but we did play competitive sports with other schools. The school where we held the sports competition (the county meet) was the Leon Valley School. We competed in such things as: “chinning”, high jump, broad jump, 100 yard dash, 400 yard relays, etc. We seldom, if ever, won anything, but we tried hard and practiced pretty hard. I can’t remember getting much training guidance from anyone, but it was fun for us. I think we were mostly a strong and healthy bunch of “ole” country boys who got strength from good food and lots of work doing chores at home.

The 400-yard relay was fun. We definitely were not championship material, but we did have one boy who could run like a deer. His name is Heber Moore and he could make the rest of us look like we were standing still; so we just put him in the ANCHOR position (the final man to get the baton). In the races we ran, we seemed to get more and more behind in each of the first three legs. Then after HEBER got the baton, he always made up a lot of the lost time.

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The Stage Plays
Maurice Reagan

As part of our “lifes’” training – to learn some of the “Arts”, we would occasionally put on little stage plays at Leon Springs School. We had a nicely designed school, just made for such purposes. We had a nice little stage with rope-controlled curtains and a flexible partition between the two main rooms adjacent to the stage. This partition could be folded back to form one large room for the audience.

I know the three teachers we had, had done the best they could with the work to put these plays on. (That work all in addition to their hard work of each teaching three grades in each room, and each teaching at least five subjects to each grade); but we sure needed more help and guidance on how to make the plays more realistic. For example, it seemed that no one ever took care of providing “props” for the plays.

I remember one play where I had the “opening lines.” I was to walk over to what was suggested to be a pot plant on a table, and “finger” the plant and say, “My how this creeper has crept!” but we had no table and No plant! I didn’t even know what a “creeper” was!

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Epilogue
Maurice Reagan

I often think longingly of those days, long ago, at Leon Springs School. There are so many pictures in my “Mind’s Eye” which flash up on that private screen inside me. From time to time, I see the two water fountains with the string of fountains on each, and their rock structures; I see the rough – rocky ground where we played softball, and the graded oblong “running” track around the entire playground; I see MIKE COPENHAVER’S horse which was his “transportation” to school from five miles away, tied up at the far end of the track; I can see our “soft” softball which got that way from being hit so much; I hear the gunfire from Ad Toepperwein’s rifle and shotgun target shooting nearby; I see the teachers ringing the hand held bell, signaling us that its time to line up and go back to classes; I see the crowds of people attending our BUNCO parties and school plays; I see all the family donated cakes and pies lined up for sale at five cents per slice during inter-missions at bunco parties and plays; I see the big black space heating stoves; I see the stage curtain, printed with the names of all the “contributors” who bought the curtain for us; I see the faces of my classmates, especially the girls I liked so much; and hundreds of other visions of people, things, and “happenings.”

Oh how I wish I could go back there-somehow-for just an hour, or just a day-to revisit those times; and sadly too, I remember that many have already left us-and I feel so bad that I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye.

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When I Attended Leon Springs School
Jo Ann Toepperwein Harris

I attended Leon Springs School from September 1944 until 1949. My teachers were:
1944-1945 1st grade, Miss Geiger; 1945-1946 2nd grade Mrs. Flathouse
1946-1947 3rd grade, Miss Adams; 1947-1948 4th grade Mr. Klier
1948-1949 5th grade Mrs. Taylor; 1949-1950 6th grade Mrs. Fox
We moved to Helotes in January 1950 after my grandfather sold the ranch, which is now the Dominion. Three of my younger brothers also attended Leon Springs School, Max A., Charles, and William.

School started each day with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer.
We did not know what a dress code was, but girls did not wear shorts, jeans, or pants of any kind, even on cold days. Girls did not wear flip-flops or tennis shoes. We wore starched, ironed dresses, even if they were hand made out of feed sacks. We wore socks and oxfords. One year I got some brown and white saddle oxfords. I wanted some penny loafers, but my parents said they wouldn’t last all year.

Boys wore starched, ironed shirts with blue jeans and a belt. They wore boots, high top tennis shoes or work boots, polished. Their hair was cut short.

We had no cafeteria until I was in the 5th or 6th grade, but we never got to buy our lunch because it was too expensive.

In the first and second grade we took music and were in the rhythm band. We played sticks and tambourines. We would perform for the PTA.
The school had a Christmas play every year. One year I was a fairy and one year an angel. After the plays, Santa came and passed out fruit and candy. One year we had a minstrel. It was so much fun because we got to blacken our faces and arms. We had to wrap a turban around my blond hair.
Occasionally, we would have a special program and we would get out of class. I don’t remember if we had to pay or if the PTA sponsored it. I remember a magic show and a marimba player, and Charlie Moss from Helotes who had a horse that did tricks.

I remember my mother telling about a play put on about 1938 or 1939. It was a womanless wedding. My daddy was a bridesmaid, and I believe Milton Kraut was the bride.

The PTA had fundraisers once or twice a year with a dinner, fishponds, a cakewalk, and other activities. When Mr. Biggus, the superintendent, came to visit we would have to be on our best behavior. One time he brought a movie. We expected a cartoon or a child’s movie and we were all so excited. We gathered together in one room, moving all the desks out of the way. After several starts on the projector he found he had brought the wrong film. It was so disgusting I could hardly watch. It was the development of a baby chick inside of the egg. In the 3rd and 4th grade a member of the Gideons came and gave out New Testaments to all the students. That could never happen today.

When I was in the second grade I got sick one day. I threw up all over the classroom. Mrs. Fox said I had a fever and needed to go home, but neither the school nor anyone had a phone, so Archie Asher, an upperclassman took me home (about two miles) on the back of his horse. I must have just had an upset stomach because I was fine by the time I got home. The public health nurse came every year and gave us our diphtheria and small pox vaccinations. She also came and checked our hair for lice (pedulosis). One time I, the only blond Anglo in my grade, had lice. The nurse sent a note home with instructions and the name of the medication to treat it, but the medication had to be purchased at a pharmacy in San Antonio, 25- 30 miles away. My grandmother looked in one of her medical books and soaked my head in kerosene. It did the trick, but it sure did burn. They had to shampoo my head multiple times to get the petroleum odor out.

In the 4th grade the PTA had a May Fest with a May Pole and a queen contest. The whole school got to vote for May Day Queen. I had the measles and was out of school for 2 weeds so I didn’t think I had a chance to win, but my brothers got all their friends to vote for me. I beat all the upper class girls. My aunt made me a long white dress so I thought I was pretty important.

The school was the center of the community. During the war, I remember attending a shooting exhibition by Adolph and Plinky Toepperwein to raise money for war bonds. They shot cigarettes out of each other’s mouths and did all kinds of tricks.

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Margie’s Story of Leon Springs
Margie Wood Mooney

My story is just memories, not history. The first thing I remember in my life is when we moved to Leon Springs. I woke up one morning, I was in the back of our car and when I got out Mother was moving stuff into a little house in the Aue Addition. Daddy had gone to Camp Stanley and had gotten a job there that day. I don’t remember how long we stayed there, but then we moved across the creek down the Scenic Loop Road about a mile from Rudy’s store. It wasn’t long before we bought the house my sister, LaVerne, and I grew up in. It was close to the railroad tracks that went into Camp Stanley. They were just building highway 87 when we moved in. I remember standing in the window and watching the trucks and men working to build the highway. When we bought the house it had been the old PX building for Camp Bullis. There were no glass windows. Instead sections of the wall had hinges at the top and had to be raised open from outside the house. After raising up the windows, you had to prop them open with a board. Daddy and my Uncle Frank remodeled the house enough for us to live in. We had an outdoor toilet about a hundred yards (it seemed a hundred miles) behind the house. There were “zillions” of bottle caps scattered all around on the ground by the house and we even found a hand grenade. My sister and I used the pineapple for years as a pineapple for our playhouse. My sister, our cousin Dorothy, and I made dozens of mud pies and we always served pineapple because we thought the hand grenade looked like one. We didn’t know what it was and we were always trying to get that little metal pin off our pineapple because it was in our way. We had been playing with that “pineapple” for years before our mother saw what we were playing with and she about fainted. She took it away from us and we never saw it again. I don’t know what she did with it.

When we lived in the house by the creek, the creek would come up when it rained a lot and you couldn’t get in or out. Everything was flooded. Daddy must have walked through the pasture to get to work. You had to haul the water you used and Daddy hauled the water from the creek for Mother to do the washing, which she had to do on a rub board. (I still have that rub board.) I remember when my cousin, Dorothy, her mother, Aunt France, and Aunt Lillian, Pete, and Denna Mae coming to see us, we would go down to the creek with a bar of soap and take a bath. We’d take a towel and I can remember particularly Aunt Lillian washing her hair with a bar of “Grandpa’s Pine Tar Soap”. We used the creek for drinking, washing, bathing, washing cars and everything else.

When we moved over to the house by the railroad track we had to haul our water. We hauled it from the spring, which was back behind the big swimming pool on the Altgelt place. Daddy had a great big old wooden barrel on a trailer and he would dip the water with a bucket to fill the big barrel and haul it back to the house. That was our drinking water. We had an old cistern and we got water from it to wash our clothes. We finally got electricity in about 1935 or 1936 and in about 1938 we had a well drilled and we had our own water and Daddy didn’t have to haul it anymore. Daddy then started remodeling the house again and put rock on it. I remember Stella Valdez’ daddy putting the rock on the house. Bill Moreau helped Daddy put in the electric wires and do the building on the house. Then we had indoor plumbing and that was wonderful.

I started school in 1934 in the little rock school. I remember people talking about the old school burning and wondering if some of those mean boys in the neighborhood had started that fire. I feel sure that my cousins, L.B. and Elton Hill were in that old school that burned. When the school burned, they had school at Mrs. Saley’s house. Mrs. Saley lived in a great big two story house behind Aue’s store. We always loved to stop and say hello to Mrs. Saley. She was always out raking her yard. She always kept her yard absolutely spotless. I’m sure the inside of her house was the same.
I remember the school had two little rock water fountains and each one had three or four water facets. Those were our drinking fountains. They had one for the boys and one for the girls. We used to have Mexican Suppers out in the school yard and Mother always helped and that was good eating and the kids always had a lot of fun. Rudy’s store was right where Rudy’s Place still is; he had a grocery store and a gas station. We used to go in the store before school and we couldn’t afford the good pencils and we had to buy cedar pencils. I think they were two for a nickel, maybe cheaper than that. We had to have Big Chief tablets and we hated the pencils and the tablets because they were hard to write pretty, or scribble pretty, or to draw pretty on.

The school had big old stoves in each room. There was a wood shed in the back of the school and the boys would have to bring the wood in and keep the fires going. There were cloakrooms between the classrooms and they were open at the top. Sometimes the kids would climb over the walls and go into the other classrooms. Of course, we weren’t supposed to do that, but sometimes we did. ]
One time, a bunch of the kids slipped back into the cloakroom and Walter was kissing Delores and he was going to show Daniel how to kiss me. Of course we were pretty young and the kiss was just a little peck. There were only about fifteen kids in the class and about eight of us were in the cloakroom. That was the majority of the class and of course we were missed by Mrs. Sommers, our teacher. She knew we were in the cloakroom because she could hear us. When she tried to open the door, the boys leaned on the door so she couldn’t get in. We didn’t want her to know what we were doing and Walter tells her, “You can’t come in here; we don’t have no clothes on.” She really got frantic then trying to get that door open. She finally got in and she questioned us one at a time for days at recess, before school, and whenever she could trying to find out what was going on in that cloak room. She wanted to know if we really had our clothes off. Of course, we didn’t have our clothes off, but that was the only thing Walter could think of to say to keep her from coming in there and finding out how many of us were in there.

Mrs. Sommers was one of our teachers for several years and was greatly loved. Other teachers I remember are Alma Geiger, Hulda Geiger, Mrs. Tessman, Wayman Coleman, Martin Budrow, and Irene Dunn. I remember Mrs. Sommers always working the violets around the edges of the flowerbeds. She worked those violets every recess and every lunch hour. She kept our flowerbeds so beautiful all the time. When the crepe myrtles were in bloom and the sage bushes blooming at sometimes of the year, and the violets blooming it was so beautiful that for years we won first place for being the most beautiful school in the state of Texas. I was so proud of that plaque. I hope that plaque is around where they can have it in the museum display.

Every year we had what they called the Interscholastic School Meet we competed against each other with the other rural schools for different things, writing stories, quoting poetry, and we had choirs and we sang. One year Mother and primarily Aunt France who was Dorothy’s mother made us little green striped pinafores and white blouses and they were so pretty. Our mothers worked hard to sew those for us and I think we placed in the meeting that year, we might have even been in first place. I remember Helen Altgelt being in first place in reciting poetry. Her poem, if I remember right, was Trees by Joyce Kilmer.

From time to time, fairly frequently, we had baseball games where we competed with other schools. Lock Hill, Kirby, or Selma would come to our school or else we would go to their school to play baseball. In particular, there was a pitcher on the Kirby team and she was a fast pitcher and no one wanted to bat against her but we had too. I guess that’s where we all learned to be good losers because I don’t think we ever beat Kirby. I’m not even sure we ever beat Lock Hill or Selma or any or the others either but we did learn to be good losers. I think we all turned out pretty good. It was a lot of fun playing with the other schools.

One thing they had at the school was “The Old Maid’s Convention”. The people enjoyed that so much that the men decided to put on a program too. The men wore the dresses and bonnets their wives had worn in the play. That was a real big hit.

About 1939, Dr. A.V. Boand, a pastor, started that little church at Leon Springs. They had church in the schoolhouse until the building was built. I thought Catherine Jean was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life, next to Margarite Schultize. I thought she was a very beautiful girl. Mrs. Self, Miss Helen, and also Mrs. Kraut figured a lot in our young days. They were always willing to do anything to help the young people have dinners and get togethers at their homes. They were always cooking such delicious foods for us to eat. Mrs. Kraut made some kind of yeast bread that was just heavenly. It was so good.

Then the war came and lots and lots of cars were coming in and out of Camp Stanley everyday. We would have black out drills at night, sometimes it would just be at dark and the sirens would go off. We never knew if they were for real or if they were just for practice black out, but it didn’t matter, I remember maybe rolling my hair or shampooing my hair, but we turned out the lights instantly when the sirens went off. It was frightening because we didn’t know if it was for real or not. But, being only about 300 yards from Stanley that if it were for real that we were gone. It was a scary time. We were very secretive about telling any outsiders, or anyone, anything we knew about Camp Stanley. I remember being on the Greyhound bus going to Boerne High School and many people asking a lot of questions about Camp
Stanley, and I would never ever tell them anything. One time I remember someone asking me if there were many people working at Camp Stanley and I told them that there were probably two or three people working there. In fact, it took about an hour and a half for all the cars to clear out when quitting time came in the evening. I was always taught to keep anything about Stanley to myself. I felt like my life could be in danger. Probably most of the people that asked those questions were very innocent about asking, but I never knew, so I never told them anything.

I remember the rail road track that we kept hot, it was hot in the summertime and we kept it hot walking it all the time. We loved going down to that train depot and we would sit down there in the shade and play and talk sometimes. Also in that old train depot someone would come and hold a revival. That was before we had a church. Sometimes they would have revivals in the schoolhouse. A lot of times Pete, Donald, Sidney, and Lois’ dad would have church in their yard. I remember going and singing a lot of those good old songs. I don’t recall that we had any music, we might have. Someone might have played the guitar. I know Sydney was a very good guitar player. We would have church in their yard and that was some of the good times. I don’t know if Sydney played the guitar or not but I always
wanted to play the guitar and Mother paid him to teach me to play. I thought he was so handsome and was such a guitar player that for years he was my secret love. Of course, I was only six or seven years old and I think he was a teenager. Pete had the most contagious laugh. He was the most likable person and the cutest, most handsome little guy I had ever seen. Everybody loved Pete.

I remember when we first lived in that rock house that down that little road past the railroad tracks and went by Dorothy’s house, the road by the mailbox the Garza’s had a grocery store and a gas station. I remember walking over there with Mother to get something or just to visit with Mrs. Garza. They were really sweet people. They were highly respected and thought a lot of by everyone. I guess they must not have been there too long because we then went to Rudy’s store before Uncle Doc came and opened up his store. In Rudy’s store when we bought groceries there, you just paid once a month. When you paid your bill he would give us candy. Sometimes if we had a nickel we could buy candy, two pieces for a penny, and boy, we got ten pieces for that nickel and we thought we were really living then.
I remember Mr. Rogers when Daddy worked at Camp Stanley. He was the main boss and then there was Hugh Watson and he was Daddy’s boss for a long time. I remember Daddy was sick one time and Mr. Rogers always went to see about any employee who was sick. I remember he came and taught me to sing that little ABC song. You would sing them forward and then you would sing them backwards. I just thought that was great when he taught me the ABC’s.

We had an old cellar and when it would start thundering and lightning many a time we would have to get up and go to that old cellar. We weren’t too happy about that.

Daddy was a deer hunter and I remember one day a deer came into our yard. Daddy worked nights and I went in and woke him up and told him a deer was in our yard. I woke him up and he went and shot the deer. Back in those days everybody didn’t have meat very often. They had no refrigeration and no way to keep fresh meat. So whenever Daddy butchered a deer, a cow, or a hog he would take what we could use and then he would share the rest of it. He would put the meat in pans and lay it on a big white sheet in the back of the car. Then he’d go all over the neighborhood, especially to the area where there was a little Mexican settlement, and give people whatever they
could use of the meat before it would spoil.

We rode our bicycles a lot. We rode all over the country on our bicycles exploring. One time our teacher took us on a hike up on the hill across from the school. It’s now in the Dominion. She took us all, three grades of us on a hike up that hill one time. That was real special and it was a lot of fun. There were other hills that when we were riding our bikes we would explore. In particular, there was one hill off the Scenic Loop Road where we would go up, and while I am not sure, I think there was an old Indian burial ground there. There was a cross up there and I remember we were very reverent and we didn’t hang around too long. We thought it was sacred ground.

I also remember that at the school Ad Toepperwein had a house right behind the school and he and his wife, Mamie, would practice their shooting out there. I remember Mrs. Toepperwein had a hand mirror and she used it to shoot behind her back and shoot a cigarette or a piece of chalk out of a man’s mouth. He stood there and let her do that. It was awesome! She was so accurate, but they had to trust her to be accurate to stand there and let her use a hand mirror and shoot something out of their mouth. That was something to watch.
When I heard about Pete turning out the lights out at the school, I wanted to tell him he wasn’t the only one who turned out the lights when they were having something doing there. I remember turning them out one night. No one ever knew who did it. No telling who they blamed it on and I always wondered who else turned out the lights besides Pete and me. Surely Pete Nuetze or Johnny Flores would not have done such a thing. Everyone who knows them will know why I say that. They were really mischievous.

On July 26, 1947 I was married to Clarence Leroy Mooney at the Leon Springs Presbyterian Church and so that place, of course, always has special memories for me. But I have lots of other good memories and a lot of good things that happened with the young people and with the preachers we had there. It was a lot of fun for us.

One last thing, I remember one year we used Mr. Pheiffer’s big old truck that he hauled milk into town with all the time. We used chicken wire and built a wire frame all around the truck. All the ladies made paper flowers out of crepe paper and attached them to the wire framing around the truck. We were in the Battle of Flowers Parade and that was something really special for us. We represented the wild birds and the trees of Texas. I was a meadowlark and I was standing under a red bud tree. I thought the float was
so beautiful. I wonder if anyone has a picture of it that we could include in our museum display. I thought it was so special to have that float. The only thing was, I was scared to death. I thought I wasn’t supposed to move. I stood as still as I could on that truck on the whole route of that parade. It was so hot that day and it seemed to take forever. I was so glad when it was over and I could move.

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MY HOME AT LEON SPRINGS
Lois LaVerne Wood Meyer

Driving north on Fredericksburg Road, about one mile past that little rock schoolhouse at Leon Springs, and at the crossroad going into Camp Stanley, our house and the field that surrounded it came into view. It was a grand beautiful big rock house surrounded with huge live oak trees, one of which no man could reach his arms around. At least, this is what I thought. The live oak trees were truthfully there, but the house was not really grand or beautiful. It was not true at the time my childish mind thought it was, nor had it ever been in the past and neither would it ever be in the future. It was big and grand and beautiful to me because I felt the love that was in this house and the love that went into building this house.

The kitchen was the very center of our family’s life. There was nothing pretty, sunny, or cozy about my mother’s kitchen. With the exceptions of curtains made from white feed sacks trimmed with printed feed sack borders hanging on the windows and covering the unpainted shelves which held whatever dishes, pots, pans and other utensils my mother had, her kitchen could only be called utilitarian. Her cooking ware was very basic. One skillet was used for almost everything. In the mornings, it served to cook the bacon, sausage, eggs, and milk gravy to put on the biscuits. If a cake was baked during the day, the same skillet was used to make 7-minute icing. Later, it would be used to fry chicken or perhaps round steak and sometimes even the vegetables such as okra and tomatoes or squash for supper. There was one butcher knife with a big wooden handle and a large pressure cooker for canning, but was also used for cooking anything that required a large pot, such as soup or chicken and dumplings, or, for heating water.

A big black wood stove that served many purposes other than cooking the food for the family meals dominated the west wall. It heated water for baths or washing dishes before running water was installed. It was also used to heat the irons used to iron the clothes, and in the winter as a source of warmth. The kitchen also served as our bathroom. Baths were not a daily occurrence. Between tub baths, we would have what we called spit baths. This was just a washing of face, hands, and feet using water from the wash basin. Mother would bring in the big tin wash tub when she felt a full bath was needed. I can still remember the clean smell of Life Buoy soap being lathered on a rag my mother used to wash me with. I can also remember the nice fresh smell of the line-dried clothes Mother had laid out for me to put on after my bath.
The east wall contained a long shelf used for preparing food, a place to set the two dish pans (one for washing and the other for rinsing), the family wash pan, and the family water pail with one dipper which was used by all, family, friends, and relatives. Before the well was drilled, water was drawn by the bucketful from a big concrete cistern right outside the kitchen door. Water entered the cistern as rainwater fell from the roof of the house into a gutter and through a charcoal filter. I distinctly remember the wet pungent odor associated with the drawing of water from this cistern. For years, a grape soda called Grapette would bring back to my mind the smell I experienced as a young child helping to draw water for the family use. The cistern and the Grapette are long gone, but the memories of them will linger forever in my mind.

Instead of a trashcan, a slop bucket was placed under the shelf All left over foods were collected in the slop bucket to be given to the chickens or the pigs. My sister often reminds me of the time my mother had brought in the wash tub to get my sister and I cleaned up for a special trip into town. She washed my hair, rolled it up and let it sun dry. When it was time to go, she stood me on a chair to comb my hair so that I would look nice, or perhaps so she could be proud of me, and whoops!, I fell into the slop bucket. She had to start all over, but this time I went without the curls. There was little waste in our kitchen. Most food was fresh or home canned. Very few cans, bottles, or jars needed any disposal. However, we did use paper to help start the wood fire in the kitchen stove. Since there was no electricity, a kerosene lamp was carried from room to room at nighttime to light our way.

In a corner of the kitchen beside the back door was an old ice box, which held large blocks of ice to keep our food cool. A pan under the icebox had to be kept emptied or water would overflow onto the kitchen floor. Several times a week an iceman would come to replace the melted ice. As soon as my sister and I heard his truck coming up the drive, we would rush out to be rewarded with large chunks of ice to suck on. The iceman would then take his huge black tongs, pick up a big block from the many blocks of ice that he kept covered with a canvas tarpaulin, and carry it into the kitchen. Old habits die slowly. After all the many years that have passed since we had an actual ice box, my family still refers to the refrigerator as the ice box.

No matching china, table service, or other adornments graced the family table, but never the less; mealtime is one of my most treasured memories. As I look back, it is with amazing wonder at the abundance of pleasures provided by the limited supplies that passed through this kitchen. Very little of our food was bought from a store. We had a cow that provided us with milk and cream. The milk was strained before cooling and after cooling had taken place, the cream was separated from the milk. The cream was used for cooking, in coffee, on top of desserts, or, was churned into butter. Some of the milk was used to make cottage cheese, some, which had soured and was called clabber, was eaten with leftover cornbread crumbled in as a before bedtime snack. Nothing was wasted. Any extra milk was sold, given to nearby neighbors, or else fed to the pigs. Pigs were slaughtered in the wintertime and after the hides were scraped, the meat was cut and most of it made into sausage. There were many chickens to be fed and eggs to be gathered. If a chicken dinner was to be had, the chicken first had to be caught and have its head chopped off. The chicken was then dipped into boiling water to loosen the feathers to make plucking easier. After the feathers were removed, the chicken would be dressed (or undressed, depending on how you looked at it) by gutting and cleaning it. It might also need to be cut into pieces, depending on how you planned to cook it.

Mother and Daddy both liked to hunt and in hunting season (and sometimes out of season) we had fresh deer meat. Mother would can many jars of deer chili, which we would eat year round. The preparations for canning the chili and any other food we canned were an ordeal in themselves. The jars, which had sat in the storage shed until needed, were covered in dust and grime and had to be washed. We would build a fire under the big black wash pot filled with water in the backyard. When the water was nearly boiling, we would fill a wash tub with hot soapy water and place as many jars as possible into the tub to soak and to scrub. This was a job neither my sister nor I enjoyed. The strong lye soap that Mother had made was hard on our hands. By the time we had finished washing the jars, our hands would be chapped, red, and sore. In addition, we usually had cuts on our hands and fingers from pieces of glass from jars that had accidentally gotten broken in the process.

Mother and Daddy also liked to fish and we often went on camping trips to the river. Since we had no refrigeration, most of the fish were eaten as soon as they were caught and cleaned. Mother always coated the fish with cornmeal and fried them in hot lard. More delicious fish were never eaten than those prepared by my mother. Since our parents fished all night, the fish were usually eaten for breakfast. My sister will never forget the time mother brought some fish home and fried them up for supper. My sister had a friend over and was embarrassed to death that Mother would serve breakfast food at suppertime.

Bread was made fresh daily. We never knew about toast. Biscuits were made every morning and often for supper. Corn bread was made several times a week. The biggest treat, however, was homemade yeast bread. I still remember the wonderful smell of this fresh bread coming out of the oven just about the time my sister and I returned home from school. No one ever told us this delicious bread smothered with homemade butter might not be very healthy. Few bought loaves of bread ever entered our house in those early days of my life. My dad liked to crumble left over bread into tall glasses of buttermilk on churning days. Mother often made delicious bread pudding with any bread that was left over; or else, she fed it to the pigs or chickens. I have been teased for years because I would always want a left over biscuit for a snack. I always said, “I want some bread and syrup, and put a lid on it.” I meant that I wanted the whole biscuit, the top and the bottom. If my sister was asked to fix my biscuit, she would have herself a little fun in the process. She would take an old jar lid and put it on top of the bottom half of my biscuit and hand it to me. She knew she would get a good rise out of me. I would start crying because she did not fix it right. Then Mother would have to intervene and demand that Margie remove the jar lid and replace it with the top half of my biscuit. We did not often have jelly, but we usually had syrup. It often came in big buckets. One time, it came in a can shaped like a house. The opening was the chimney, and not too large of an opening at that. When all the syrup was gone, my sister wanted the can for our playhouse. In an effort to wash it, she slid her hand down into the chimney with little difficulty. However, she was unable to extract her hand from it. Daddy had to cut the pretty little house off her hand with a pair of pliers. What a disappointment!

Most of our vegetables were grown in the garden. Potatoes, corn, tomatoes, okra, green beans, and squash were some of the vegetables planted to be eaten fresh and much of it canned for later use. Planting vegetables took much planning and hard work to get good results. Ground had to be prepared. The corn and potato field needed plowing. The hardest part was keeping it watered. There were no hydrants, hoses, or sprinklers. We never had any grass and we could not use our precious drinking and cleaning water for plants, but we could use left over bath water and the water we had rinsed the clothes in for this purpose. Therefore, we carried the rinse water by buckets to water our plants. Later when running water was installed, my dad prepared the pipes so that all the bath water emptied onto the garden rather than be wasted.

Daddy liked any kind of dessert, but he especially liked pie. In the spring, we would pick dewberries from all over the countryside and Mother would jar them so that we could enjoy dewberry cobblers all year long. We also had a peach tree and Mother would make peach butter as well as peach cobblers. My sister said we would have had a lot more peaches if Mother had cut so many switches off to use on us. We were not always as obedient as Mother would have liked. I personally tested her many times. For some reason, I just could not resist disobeying her when she scrubbed the floors. Mother would always say to me, “Do not walk on the floor until it is dry”. I would almost always dip my feet into the mop water and put my feet on the very edge of the floor, never going any further. I almost always received a switching. You would think I would learn. I would always retort, ”I’m going to tell my daddy on you”. And I am sure I did but it never helped me out. All my Daddy had to do was to give me a certain disappointing look and I would feel very remorseful and go hide and cry to myself. But, if Mother were disappointed in my behavior, I would just test her further. Daddy did have his own way of correcting us if we were willfully stubborn. Remember the water bucket with the dipper? One day at supper I announced that I wanted a glass of water. My dad told me to get up and get myself a glass of water. I said, ‘No, I want someone to go get me a glass of water.” This kept on for a little while until I knew no one was going to get up and get me a glass of water, I went and picked up the big five gallon bucket of water and dragged it to the table, got a glass and set it on the table and said, ”Now!, I want someone to give me a glass of water.” I got the water all right. My daddy picked up that water bucket and poured the entire contents over my head.

Daddy especially liked lemon pie. There was one lemon pie filling mix called My T Fine. You just had to add eggs and water to the mix and boil it until a little tablet or capsule dissolved. A yummy lemon pie filling was created in just a few minutes. Mother also made the best pineapple dessert I have ever eaten. It was made with several rolls of crust wrapped around and covered with the most delicious pineapple filling. My sister and I both regret that we did not get her recipe before she died. She did not have it written down so she must have made it from memory. We have never been able to duplicate it with satisfaction. The My T Fine mix, pineapple, as well as coconut were some of the few items that did have to be purchased from the store. Coconut cake was one of Mother’s specialties. There was no such thing as boxed cake mixes, and there were no electric mixers to beat eggs or batter. Dried fruit was available and must have been reasonably priced for dried apples, peaches, prunes, and apricots were often cooked for breakfast. She also made some special cookies called Date Surprises that we really liked. She would cut out two sugar cookies, put a dollop of finely cut cooked date filling between the two cookies, close the edges with a fork, and bake.

Much hard work had to take place before my mother could even start preparations for a meal. She could not just go into the kitchen, turn on an oven or the burners and remove food from the icebox. After the food supplies were gathered, wood had be cut, hauled into the kitchen and a fire started and given time to heat before actual cooking took place. The end results were almost always successful. However, it is not just the memories of the provision and the preparation of the food that leaves me such happy memories. An overwhelming feeling of nostalgia and warmth wells up inside me at the very word “Leon Springs.” The time I spent in Leon Springs was the only time in my life where I felt complete unity; unity in the home, in the family, in the neighborhood, and in the country. I never heard people fussing and fighting amongst themselves. Everyone seemed to be working together toward making a better life for all.

I know now that it was not out of necessity alone that caused my parents to provide for us in such an unforgettable way. I knew many families who existed on beans and cornbread (one of my favorite meals, I might say), and were fortunate to have been fed at all. It was out of love for the family that my mother and father worked so hard to provide for us with such a bountiful table.

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Hard Times for Many
Lois LaVerne Wood Meyer

The gathering at mealtime often included more than the four of our immediate family to receive the nourishing food my parents provided. Because of the hard times, it was rare that we did not have a family or two living with us. My mother and father always believed in sharing with others whatever God in His mercy had given us and I relish the memories of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and others sharing our plentiful table.

The Great Depression was still in progress and many people suffered unexpected hardships. Some had lost their jobs and had to make drastic economic changes in their lives. New jobs were scarce or even unattainable. Many lost their homes. Few