Growing Up in West Texas

Growing up in Rotan, Texas
By Jodie Baugh
July, 2008

As a little girl growing up in Rotan, TX in the 1950s and 60s many of my memories are of times spent outdoors.. I lived at the top of a hill with my sister, three cousins across the street and two cousins next door. Rarely would anyone find us apart from a group. We would be outside early in the morning and were always thinking of creative ways to keep ourselves occupied. We would often get on our bikes and ride around the town looking for any fruit tree or bush that had some type of ripe fruit on it. We felt free to help ourselves to any fresh fruit that we found. We would spend hours coasting down the hill and then walking back up to turn around and coast down again.

One time we decided to dig a channel of tunnels in a vacant lot just down the street. We worked for days digging and moving the dirt to create a tunnel system. I remember the horror on our mothers faces when they saw what we had done and recognized the danger that we would have been in if the tunnels had collapsed. We also had elaborate circuses and track meets in the street in front of our homes. Once we built a science lab in the back alley and my cousin and I had the privilege of hunting for black widow spiders in my grandmother’s garage. There were always plenty in there. My cousin, Debby and I would catch the spiders and take them to our elder siblings who planned to remove the poison from them in the lab. Unfortunately, or not, the lab usually collapsed before any real dissecting could take place.

My cousins, sister and I would spend hours swinging off of a fence on a knotted rope that hung in my grandmother’s chinaberry tree, and playing in a tree house that was built in the tree. In the evening we would all gather in my grandmother’s front yard (which was on the same street as my cousins and my house). We would play long games of hide and seek, tag, or football until it got dark, and then we would all go to our homes for bedtime.

My grandfather was a prominent businessman in Rotan and was also a member of the sheriff’s posse. He bought us all horses when we were very young and taught us how to saddle and bridle them as well as how to feed, curry, and clean the hoofs. Granddaddy was very strict with us about putting the saddles and equipment back in the tack room in a very meticulous manner. The horses were kept in a lot behind the lumberyard that was owned by my father. We would often ride with him in the evenings around the town or out to the rodeo arena and he would teach us “life” lessons while we rode. Those lessons have stayed with me through life. My cousins and I would also get the horses and ride out to the fields in the daytime. This way we could lope the horses in the nice soft field.

The whole town would go to the river bridge on momentous occasions such as a big rain. This was a bridge that went over the Clear Fork of the Brazos River. As teenagers we would often go and build a fire on the sand and just sit out there and talk. I remember one time that the whole church went out to the bridge on a Sunday evening after church. We had had a tremendous rainfall and the bridge was running over and water was overflowing several yards on the banks of the river. That was very exciting. Sometimes when the water was flowing, but not too deep we would go and swim in the river. I don’t remember ever thinking about the possibility of debris or snakes. My mother would be furious when I would come home with all of my clothes and tennis shoes red with the muddy water. The red stain never would come out of my clothes.

My mother also hated the idea of going down in a storm cellar, even though my grandparents had one in their back yard. As children we would play in it because it was cool in the summer. We would clean it and put cots in it so we could sleep in the cellar. I don’t remember ever going in the cellar during a storm, but I often heard the story of a time when a tornado was reportedly coming to the town. My family was waiting at my grandmother’s house, but Mother was not going to the cellar. Finally my dad got irritated and started to the cellar with me in his arms. The storm hit just as we were in the yard on the way to the cellar. Luckily we were not harmed during the storm. Mostly we would wait out on our porch and watch the storm clouds as they came. After the rain or storm we would play in the street gutters as the water ran down the streets.

The main crop of Rotan was cotton. I remember the excitement when the gin started running. The whole town would often go down to the gin to watch the first bale of cotton come out. I also remember the warm, wonderful smell of the cotton being ginned. I still love that smell.

As a child I never had to work in a field, but as a teenager I was a cheerleader in our high school. The cheerleaders decided one day that we needed to earn some money to help fund our trip to cheerleading camp. One of the other cheerleader’s father said that he would pay us to hoe weeds in his cotton field. We lasted about two hours in the hot sun in the field and then decided that we would find another way to raise funds for camp.

One of the special characters in Rotan was a man named Joe Ogle. Joe lived in a shack at the edge of town. He had a lucrative business growing earthworms. His house was questionably inhabitable and he had a rich field beside his house. He kept the field cultivated and grew the earthworms there. Whenever someone was going fishing they could go to Joe and purchase a big can of earthworms to take with them.

There were a couple of “haunted houses” in Rotan. One of them was a shack on a farm. Supposedly an old man lived there who was very dangerous. He would wear layers of clothing and stovetop boots on each leg. We would often drive by the house looking for him, but we were all afraid to stop or go on the property. The imaginations ran wild with all of the horrible things that he was supposed to have done. Sometimes he would come to town to clear lots for people. While he was working on the lot he would build a fire and set up housekeeping and live there while doing the work. He was slightly mentally disturbed.

My father-in-law, Sammy Baugh, has a ranch on the northeast side of Rotan. People from all over liked to come out to the ranch because one of the Double Mountains was on the ranch. They always wanted to climb the mountain. The ranchers in Rotan were for the most part very friendly and would allow access to their land unless they were feeding cattle at the time. My father-in-law got very upset with pickups in the pasture while cattle were being fed because the cattle would chase the pickups thinking that it was feeding time.

There were also stories about hidden treasure in the caves on the Double Mountains. Supposedly this had been left during the time of the Spaniards occupying Texas. I remember several men coming to the Mountains to search for the treasure during the 1970s. Unfortunately for us they never found any treasure.

My grandfather had moved to Rotan from Snyder in 1937 and opened the dry goods store, H.L. Davis and Company. My mother worked as his bookkeeper and my aunt and uncle worked in the store with him. My father had grown up in Rotan and married my mother during the war. After the war my grandfather partnered with him to purchase Home Lumber Company. Home Lumber Company was the G.E. distributor as well as RCA. We were one of the first families in Rotan to get a color television in our home. My mother had two sisters, one of whom lived across the street with her three children. My father was one of nine children. Two of the siblings lived in Rotan and the others often would come home for big reunions. We would sit in the back yards and eat home made ice cream while the cousins would run and play up and down the neighborhood.

When we were in high school my cousin, who was a grade ahead of me, and I thought we needed a car. My grandfather purchased an old Studebaker four door sedan for us to drive around town. We loved the car that was a standard shift. If was white with a red interior. My cousin and I would each pitch in 25 cents for gas a week and we could drive all over the country with that much gas. The only bad thing about the car was that it had a defective muffler so we always had a lot of smoke coming from the back. Our friends always said that we were spraying for mosquitoes when we drove by.

If we needed to buy special clothes for school or wanted to have a really special shopping event we would either go to Sweetwater or Abilene. Sweetwater had two drive- in theaters that we could go to in the summer. These times were few and far between because I had a 10:00 curfew. That was a really special time. I do have a childhood memory of going to Thornton’s Dept. Store in Abilene during Christmas time. I was amazed at all of the wonderful Christmas decorations that they had in the store. I would compare that to a child going to Macy’s in New York today. It was a magical experience for me. I was able to purchase all of my Christmas presents in that one store.

While there weren’t a lot of things going on in Rotan I don’t remember ever being bored. As teenagers many of the boys would either work on their daddy’s farms or ranches. Others often worked at the gyp mill that was and still is the “big industry” in Rotan. Also some of the boys would take jobs at my father’s lumberyard and help with the construction that was going on and others would work for the highway department. The guys were always in great shape when it came time for football two-a-days to start in August. Girls had more trouble finding paying jobs, but many of us babysat for extra income. I was always looking for ways to make money. I worked at my granddaddy’s store doing inventory in the summer and my cousin and I were the gift wrappers during the Christmas season. We would go to work after school and all day on Saturdays wrapping packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The girls who were home usually helped cook meals and did the housekeeping chores.

The churches were very active in Rotan. The Baptist, Methodist and Church of Christ were all right next door to each other on “church street.” Many of my afterschool activities were spent either in school activities or church activities. I also worked in the summers helping at the African American and Hispanic churches.