Grandma Evans's story

I was fascinated by my Grandmother Lola Evans. She was a city girl that went out west for adventure(work) when she was just sixteen years old. She liked to tell stories and I loved listening to them. She also liked to write and wrote the Hutto News for many years. One thing that she had shared with me is that she had a written a story and submitted it to Reader's Digest and that it had been rejected. It was her dream to be published so I am going to do just that...move over Reader's Digest, my blog is taking it from here.

She wrote this story in 1965.  Her story begins in 1906 when she was 19 years old. The town in the story is Hutto, Texas. The creek is Brushy Creek and the time of the described incident is about 1910. Keep in mind that women did not have the right to vote until 1920. The attached photo of grandmother was taken between 1900-1904 in southern Pittisfield, Ill.. She is the taller girl.

                      A Dark Night in November

     I had always said that I would never marry a farmer, but I married one in spite of my assertion. However, he was not a farmer when I married him, but a railroad man, working for the Southern Pacific out of Tucson, Arizona.
     We had been married about a year when our first child, a daughter, was born.
     My husband, Roy, had been in a bad railroad accident and severely injured. He was on crutches. His body was a mass of bruises caused by his being crushed between two box cars.
     When the baby was two weeks old, we received a telegram from Roy's family in Texas. They wanted us to come at once as my husband's father was not expected to live but a short time. We decided we should go, so we made our reservations on the Southern Pacific to San Antonio. At San Antonio, we had to change to the Missouri Pacific for the rest of the trip to Hutto. We had a good trip down, the baby was perfect--she didn't cry during the entire time. As she was so young, she slept a lot of the time.
     We arrived at our destination at midnight. As the family did not know at what time we would arrive, they did not meet us, so we stayed at the only hotel in town. In the morning. we rented a horse and buggy from the livery stable and rode out to the family farm which was about two miles from town. The family was overjoyed to see us, though their joy was saddened when they saw the serious condition of my husband.  His father pleaded with him to give up railroading, and received Roy's promise to take over the farm after his impending death. So instead of being a visitor to Texas, I became a permanent resident and a farmer's wife.
      I never liked the farm life, for there was too much work involved. There were no modern conveniences so everything was done the hard way. We even had to draw our water by hand from a deep well. There were cows to milk, butter to churn and mold, hogs and chickens to feed, eggs to gather, and numerous other chores to do. I never seemed to get through. I did all my own house work, washing, ironing, even the sewing, and there was always plenty of mending to do. When night came, I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was fall into bed.
      My husband was a very hard-working man. He cultivated about two hundred acres of land, using mules to pull his farm implements. He always kept a Mexican family on the place to help. They had many children and the children helped in the fields with hoeing, chopping, picking the cotton and pulling the corn.
     
      My husband never had time for much recreation, as he was too busy making a living for his family. However, he would never miss going to town on election day and night. There were no televisions or radios then, the returns were flashed on the outside wall of the corner drug store by a projector. He loved to get with the boys for a "bull session", and he never knew when to come back, sometimes staying as late as midnight. After our second daughter was born, I never went with him to watch the election returns. I would take the children and stay at the home of my mother-in-law, who had moved to town after the death of Roy's father. She was quite old, and her bedtime was precisely at 8:30 o'clock. The babies were also asleep by that time. That would leave me sitting there alone and bored. Time would pass very slowly.
      On one particular presidental election night in November, we had come to town as usual so Roy could vote and watch the election returns. The horse we drove to the buggy was named Henry. He was very gentle, but he had a very bad habit, and that was balking. If he didn't want to do something, no amount of coaxing or slapping him with the lines would budge him. As Roy's mother lived in the business district, we left the horse and buggy there and Roy walked the short distance to town. As he left, I laid down an ultimatum. I said to him "If you are not back by ten o'clock, I am going to take the children and go home." I'm sure that he didn't think I would do it as it was a very dark night, and he knew how scared I was of the dark. To this day, I do not know whether I really meant it or not when I told him this, but when the clock struck ten, and then ten thirty, I made up my mind that I would just show him. I took our two children and laid them on a quilt in the bottom of the buggy and started for home. I was very brave when I started out, but when I turned off the main road onto the seldom used creek road, my bravery left me and I was really scared. When I passed by the city cemetery and a hoot owl screeched, I almost lost my nerve. I would have liked to turn around and gone back to town, but I was young and stubborn. I continued on my way to the creek which I would have to ford, as there was no bridge. This was a rather wide creek and about two feet deep. The ford was narrow with loose gravel on both sides and I knew that if I missed the roadbed and got stuck in the gravel that Henry could not pull us out and we would have to stay there until morning, or until a search party might be organized to hunt for us. Somehow, I succeeded in getting across safely and continued on toward home. Then another worry came to me. How could I ever go into the dark house alone, as we never locked the doors when we left, except when we went on a trip to be gone several days or longer. Then it came to me that I might be able to get Juanita, one of the Mexican girls on the place, to spend the night with me. That meant that I would have to pass our gate and go on down the road about 200 yards to their house to get her. But when I reached our gate, Henry refused to budge another inch. Therefore, I decided I would walk down the road to the Mexican house. I was afraid of leaving the sleeping babies in the buggy with Henry hitched to it so I had to take time to unhitch him. Then I ran stumbling down the dark road, worrying the whole time about leaving the children in the buggy and thinking what they would do if they were to wake.
      When I was nearing the Mexican's home, all their dogs began barking and I came near to running back to the buggy. I was more afraid of the dogs than I was of entering our dark house alone. But before I turned around, the Mexican man awoke and called off the dogs.  He could understand very little English so he called Juanita, who could speak English. I immediately told her what I wanted. I waited while she quickly dressed, then we walked back to the buggy.  I hitched Henry back to the buggy and he trotted right on through the gate and down the road to the house. As we were going up the steps to the house, Juanita carrying one of the children and I the other one, who should walk up from the side of the house but my dear husband.  "Hello, dear wife" he said. "I hope that you had a safe trip home."  He had caught a ride with a friend as far as the cemetery, then walked home across the field, which was a short cut.  He had no idea what I had been through since I left town and I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing. I smiled back with "I didn't expect you to be home so soon." Some things are just best unsaid.  Anyway, as scary as this experience had been, carrying out the ultimatum did have an impact as future election nights mostly ended by 10:00. 
      Many many election nights have come and gone. My Roy has been deceased now for eleven years.  You might be wondering if the wiser older me still thinks that the impetus decision to follow through with the ultimatum was the right thing to do and to that I say "I wasn't so sure back then but I am now.".