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Early Winter Texans, Circa 1925
My grandparents, Edward Horace Tate and Lucinda Amanda Tate, may have
become "Winter Texans" even before that term was generally adopted. In
1925 they joined a real estate excursion train at Roosevelt, Oklahoma,
traveling to McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. Convinced of the
benefits the realtors explained and impressed by the tour of the valley,
Granddad purchased ten acres of fertile land on that very trip.
Granddad Tate had homesteaded in western Oklahoma in 1901, receiving a
lottery number assignment for 160 acres. This was difficult farmland,
with cold winters, drought years, and early hardships. Their children
were my Aunt Muriel (born in 1903), my mother Vernice Amanda (1906), and
my Uncle Eddie (1911).
Granddad had been stricken with
tuberculosis as a young man. Several times he stayed for treatment at a
sanitarium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Usually he was able to return
to the farm to continue his livelihood, but it seems he was never
completely free of the disease, which recurred often.
In the
mid-twenties realtors and land developers were offering property in the
Rio Grande Valley. They arrived in western Oklahoma and advertised train
trips and accommodations. Granddad encouraged some of his neighbors to
take the trip with him. Mr. and Mrs. Edmondson agreed and were eager to
go. On the morning they departed from the Roosevelt depot my grandmother
Mannie came to see them off. Mrs. Edmondson said, "Lucy, you just must
come with us!" Amazingly, my grandmother boarded the train with the
group, without a change of clothes or a toothbrush, and happily made the
long trip to the valley.
This was the ideal location for Granddad
to spend the winters away from the cold Oklahoma weather. It was a
remarkable decision for his health. He purchased ten acres near Alamo,
Texas, on Tower Road. Soon he built a comfortable little two-room house.
While I was growing up, Granddad and Mannie left for South Texas about
October 1 and stayed until springtime. This was their winter home for
nearly twenty years.
My mother tells that I had my first birthday
with her and my grandparents in the valley. In fact, we were stranded
there. The winter of 1929-30 was one of the coldest on record. There was
so much snow in western Oklahoma that the roads were filled to the top
of the fence posts. My dad wrote that he could drive the Model T pickup
above the fences on the packed snow. Even the trains were snowbound.
Granddad found workers to plant the acreage in citrus, especially orange and
grapefruit trees. During the depression years, there was little market
because there was little money. However, Granddad generously shared much
of the fruit, sending it by train to Kiowa County, Oklahoma. He sent
fruit for family and friends alike. There were also baskets for the
churches, schools, the black church and black school, the banker and the
minister, and the mothers-in-law, Grandmother Davis and Aunt Cleo. I can
remember going to the depot, waiting for the train to come with the
wonderful baskets of oranges and grapefruit. Most children only had an
orange or an apple at Christmas time and we were truly blessed by
Granddad's thoughtfulness.
I was eleven years old when my family
made a trip from western Oklahoma to the Rio Grande Valley for Christmas
in 1939. Dad was driving a new 1939 Chevy. Grandmother Davis and Aunt
Cleo came along as well as Mother, Dad, younger brother Ted, and
three-year-old Frances. The valley was like another world with the lush
foliage of the citrus trees, grapefruit outside the back door for the
picking, the warm sunny days, and many Mexican residents. We visited the
fruit stands and markets and made a trip to Matamoros. Mother even
managed to hide the Christmas presents in the car with so many
passengers. But on Christmas morning Santa had left gifts for each of us
while he was bringing special ones for little Frances, who truly
believed he would find her. I received roller skates and found sidewalks
in Alamo to speed along. Ted was tremendously favored with a Lionel
electric train. (Only the year before in 1938, we had been extended
wonderful electric power by the REA.) Frances was given a beautiful
Christmas doll.
About 1943 Granddad and Mannie moved from their
country home to Hobart, Oklahoma. He had become increasingly ill and
wanted Mannie to be close to a doctor. He was very concerned by the war
news and mounting casualties, listening to the radio when he could. The
last winter, he was not able to go to the Rio Grande Valley and was
bedfast most times. He told me, "Barbie, I don't think I will ever see
the end of this terrible war." It was true, as he died on March 30, 1944.
I finally became a bona fide Texan in 1949, after marrying J. E. Pybas and
moving to Warrens Bend in Cooke County. Many years later I easily found
the Tower Road site my Granddad Tate had loved and nurtured. It was
still owned by a Tate grandchild. In 1980 there were no more citrus
trees on the property. It was being used as farmland but I could
remember the lush orchard and the peak production during his lifetime.
Barbara Pybas
Gainesville, Texas
Published:
November 14,
2005
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