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Their days of picking cotton, shaking
peanuts and playing “Annie Over” are long gone, but three area sisters
-- Elsie Robinett, Marie White and Bernice Farley -- feel blessed to
have the memories of their early life in the Rock Bluff community.
Elsie, Marie and Bernice are the three
surviving children of the 10 children -- five boys and five girls --
born to Henry Franklin Clements Skaggs and Lizzie Lee Browning Skaggs.
Their siblings were Virgil, Mae, Cleo, Vernon, Archie, Lloyd and
Frankie Lee.
“Papa liked to say that he had five boys,
and that each one of them had five sisters,” Elsie laughed.
The Skaggs family was among the first to
settle in the Rock Bluff community, several miles west of DeLeon. Will
and Fanny Skaggs -- Elsie, Marie and Bernice’s grandparents -- were
charter members of the Rock Bluff Baptist Church, which was organized
in December of 1879. That little church has always figured prominently
in the lives of Skaggs family members, with several of the men serving
as pastors, including their father, who was known affectionately
throughout the area as “Brother Frank.”
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SKAGGS
FAMILY. This photo, taken in April of 1936, shows the entire
Skaggs family, including the spouses and offspring of the married
children, on the front porch of their home at Rock Bluff. In the
back row, left to right, are Myrtle Turner Skaggs, Geraldine
Skaggs, Mae Skaggs Quinn, Cleo Skaggs Clement, Artie Singleton
Skaggs (holding baby Charles), Georgie Fae Sanders Skaggs and
Elsie Skaggs. Second row, left to right, Virgil Skaggs, Jackson
Quinn, Arlin Clement (holding Glen), Vernon Skaggs, Archie Skaggs
(holding Jerry), Lloyd Skaggs and Marie Skaggs. Third row, left to
right, McElton Skaggs, Wayne Quinn, Dwayne Clement, Brother Frank
Skaggs, Lizzie Skaggs, Bernice Skaggs and Frankie Lee. The two
little girls at the left, in the very front, are Billie Frank
Skaggs and Marjorie Nell Quinn. |
In the early 1990s, Bernice published a
book titled, “Brother Frank Skaggs,” which provided a fascinating
account of the early days at Rock Bluff, including information about
Frank Skaggs’ ministry. At one point she noted, “He never did ask a
dollar for his preaching, even though at times he had to neglect his
farm. The Lord always provided his necessities. The people of the
church gave what they could of their own meager goods.” Frank
Skaggs also traveled to preach at (and later pastor) other churches in
the area, with his mode of travel a horse named “Cricket.” According
to the book, “Brother Frank would pack his “grip” Saturday morning
with clean underwear, socks and a shirt. His Bible went into the bag
last. The bag was similar to a doctor’s little black bag in shape. It
was larger and deeper. It was colored brown, the same as his saddle.
He would leave somewhere around noon on Saturday, get there in time
for services on Saturday night, preach again on Sunday morning, eat
lunch with someone in the church, and get home again around
nightfall.”
Although Brother Frank may have had to
neglect his farming duties from time to time, there was no evidence he
ever neglected family. Their life, even the youngest ones, seemed to
have been centered around the church and farm, just like his. Bernice
noted in her book that, “Brother Frank was strict with his children,
as was his father before him.” But she also noted, “Brother Frank
was not serious all the time. He could play the fiddle really well.
His youngest daughter (Bernice) remembers his rendition of “Forty-nine
Dogs and a Wildcat.” It was one of her favorites. During the playing
of it, he would give a wild whoop every so often. He also played
“Sally Gooden,” “Old Joe Clark,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Soldier’s
Joy,” ...and just about anything else he heard.
Other pleasant memories for the sisters
involve the games they played in childhood. The sisters, now all in
their 80s, laughingly try to explain how “Annie Over” was played, with
“a group of children on one side of the house, and a group on the
other. The ball was thrown over the house and the person who caught it
ran to the other side, with everyone trying to anticipate which side
of the house he/or she would come from.”
“You’ve probably never heard of the kind
of ball we used,” Elsie said. “We raveled-out men’s old worn-out socks
and used the strings to make balls.”
The sisters recall that other household
items were also put to good use as toys, including tin cans. “We’d
knock the tin can with a board,” Elsie said, “and then run.” They also
recalled happily playing with paper dolls fashioned from catalog
cutouts.
“We were never bored,” White said.
One of Elsie’s favorite toys was a
celluloid doll. “It was probably about six or eight inches tall and my
sister Cleo had made it a few clothes,” she said. “I thought that was
the prettiest doll I’d ever seen.”
Bernice recalled a “Little Orphan Annie”
decoder pin that was a particular favorite of hers. “I listened to
Little Orphan Annie every day on the radio,” she said. “And I told
Mama that I wanted one (a pin) but she said we couldn’t afford it. I
told her it ‘doesn’t cost anything’ -- all you had to do was send the
seal underneath the lid of Ovaltine and a three-cent stamp probably.
So finally Mama gave up. But when she got the Ovaltine she told me ‘I
got it, and now you’re going to drink it. Don’t ask anybody to help
you.’ I probably gained 10 pounds on that Ovaltine.”
Chores were an important part of daily
life, with Elsie and Marie milking cows and doing their share of field
work -- including shaking peanuts. “We grew cotton at first,” Marie
said, “but then switched to peanuts.” She explained that shaking
peanuts involved someone plowing up the field first, “and then we’d
pick the peanuts up and shake the dirt from them, and put them in a
pile.”
“And we hoed cotton and peanuts,” Elsie
said.
The girls also did their share of indoor
chores -- but cooking was usually not one of them.
“Our mother was a good cook,” Elsie said,
“and she cooked so fast she didn’t hardly have any time to teach us.”
“She always said she could do it faster
than she could show us how,” Marie said.
“But Marie and I were good hands,” Elsie
said, “I’d get on one side of the bed and she’d get on the other and
we’d make the bed that way.”
“When we swept the floors, we both swept
the same one and then we’d go to the next one,” Marie said. The two
sisters said they don’t know if they worked any faster that way, but
the work was certainly more enjoyable.
“Everybody said we grew up like twins,”
Elsie said.
Bernice explained that as a young child,
she suffered a debilitating injury, and for a long time was not
expected to do the same amount of work as the others.
“I was probably about 11 months old,”
Bernice said, “and they think I picked up a hot coal.”
“When Papa built the fire in the fire
place in the morning he would dip out the ashes and put them in a big
can,” Elsie said. “I think we were all eating breakfast, and Bernice
decided to pull up on a chair, and walked around the fireplace to get
to those ashes. Nobody knew she could walk.”
“They’d put it on the opposite side from
me,” Bernice said, “but I found it.” The burns resulted in one of her
fingers being fused to the palm of her hand, but she learned to do
many things, including play a pump organ and the piano. “I didn’t know
I wasn’t supposed to be able to do things, so I just did them,” she
said. Later surgeries improved the condition somewhat.
Bernice was the “baby of the family” and
she remembers finally getting her share of chores, injury
notwithstanding, when Elsie left home.
“I started having to make the beds and
such,” Bernice said.
Christmas is another source of cherished
memories for the sisters.
“If we managed to get fruit and hard
candy, which we didn’t have during the year,” Elsie said, “it was a
treat.”
“They (Papa and Mama) always got two coconuts,” Marie said.
Bernice recalled being particularly fond of the stalk of bananas that
Papa brought home for Christmas. “I got to eat all I wanted,” she
said.
The sisters said that their Christmas
treats would be placed in “little cane-bottom chairs at the foot of
the beds” for them to find as they awoke.
“I remember hearing Mama talking about
one Christmas when there was bad weather,” Elsie said. “Papa didn’t
think they could get to town -- I guess they were still going in the
wagon then -- so Mama and our brother Vernon walked to Duster and
carried 10 dozen eggs to buy something for Christmas.”
Most of the time, “going to town” meant
going into Duster to shop at Blair’s grocery store, but occasionally
the family went to DeLeon.
Bernice noted that the sisters do not
know a specific date that the Rock Bluff School was established, but
that Papa (Brother Frank Skaggs) received all his schooling there.
The Rock Bluff School consolidated with
the Duster School in the early 1920s, and Elsie, Marie and Bernice
attended school there.
According to Bernice, the Rock Bluff
Cemetery was established in 1878 with the burial of S.W. Walker. There
are five Confederate soldiers buried there. Bernice noted that there
were “two other notable things about the cemetery -- a baby
(identity unknown) buried in a cigar box, and a black lady who was not
allowed to be buried in any other cemetery in the area. Her name was
Dorcas.”
The Rock Bluff Baptist Church has
remained active all these years.
“We have 10 or 12 most Sundays,” Bernice
said, “but we still have visitors every now and then -- and we sure
enjoy it when we do.”
“We always have a full house the first
Sunday in May,” Marie said. That is the date each year for the “all
day singing” that has occurred for at least 95 years. The singing
service was designated a “Historical Event” in 1985-86 as part of the
state-wide Texas Sesquicentennial Celebration.
“I’ve been going to church here for more
than 89 years now, it’s beginning to feel like home,” Elsie laughed.
All three of the “80 something” sisters sang together for a recent
“all day singing” at the church.
The first church services were held in in
the schoolhouse, but church buildings were erected several times
throughout the years, including the most recent one in August of 2002
when there was “a raising.”
“A very large group of men and women from
several churches gathered at the site one morning and by late
afternoon it was standing, with the roof and walls,” Bernice said.
Elsie (born in 1917) and her late
husband, Willard Robinett, had five children: Carolyn King of Waco;
Marilyn Warren (now deceased) and Dewitt Robinett, Sam Robinett and
Jackie Robinett, all of DeLeon. “I have 12 grandkids, eight great-grands
and two on the way,” Elsie said.
Marie (born in 1920), and her late
husband, Sherley White, had two daughters, Peggy Barton, of Granbury,
and Sherry Draper, of Crowley. “And I have four grandkids and five
great-grandkids.”
Bernice (born in 1925), and her former
husband, Lawrence Farley, had two sons, Danny, of Tom Ball, and Jim
Farley of DeLeon. “I have five grandkids, and three great-grandkids.”
Bernice’s book is filled with interesting
tidbits including that sister Cleo was the family (and community)
barber and that Marie was the official “going under the house to get
the goose eggs” person.
There are also sections of the book
dealing with hog killings, swimming holes, Saturday night baths and
even rabbit drives -- a community-wide event designed to thin the
rabbit population and protect the crops. Although these memories are
not unique to Elsie, Marie and Bernice, there are very few sisters
growing up these days that will have memories to rival them. |
