I am a native Texan and a Cradle Catholic. I was born in St. John Hospital in San Angelo, Texas on January 5, 1943. Until I was 15, I lived, with my parents on a farm six miles northwest of Miles, Texas. Miles is 19 miles east of San Angelo and today there is a great four lane highway connecting the two. When we lived there, Miles had a population of 600. Today, the population is 890 according to google. It is becoming a bedroom community of San Angelo, which has grown to over 99,000 people.
My father raised cows, hogs, and chickens. On the farm he grew wheat, barley, oats, maize and cotton.It was seldom that a cotton crop was harvested, because the grass hoppers would strip it in June, when it was too late to replant. We all worked on the farm and for farmers in the area around Miles.
From 1952 till 1956, we had a diary. It was very small as diaries go. We probably never miked over 25 cows at one time. But even at that, the diary cleared $12,000. In 1952 that was a lot of money. There was a much needed new car and daddy bought our neighbor’s GMC pickup, which my brother and sister and I learned to drive on.
We also took a trip to Miami, Florida to visit my aunt and uncle and their two daughters. We came back by Nashville, Tennessee where we saw the Grand Old Opera in the Ryman Auditorium. We came back through Alabama and stopped in Cullman, where we toured the Ava Maria Grotto, which I will highlight in another email. Other than going to see grandpa and some of my daddy’s brothers and sisters, that was the only vacation the family ever took.
A drought hit in 1953, forcing us to go to the pear patch for cow feed. We would burn the stickers off the pear, grub them and run them through a silage cutter and that was cow feed. In 1956, daddy sold the cows and the equipment. In 1957, when I was in the Seminary in San Antonio, Texas, daddy made a bumper feed crop and was only offered 10 cents a bale in the field. After daddy and my brother worked very hard to bring it all in. It made 5 large, 8 by 25 x 12 feet stacks. Mother finally sold it for $500 to the farmer that leased the farm.
In 1959, we moved to Knox County, to do some share cropping. More on that later.
I am giving away a completely set up website with 5 streams of income. To learn more and get your free website Click Here.