RSS 2.0 NEWS FEEDSThornhill House
Posted 11.24.08 at 2:37 PM As the holiday season is upon us once again, my thoughts turn back, nostalgically, (something that I do more often these days) to the Paris of my childhood. I grew up at 845 Graham Street, a huge two-storied structure with a vast attic and a verandah-style porch which runs around three sides of the house. It will be forever known as the old Thornhill residence, (not the old Harvill residence,) and an oversize photograph of it hangs in the Lamar County Historical Museum, thanks to the efforts of Paul Denney.
Thornhill was an early Paris physician, and my mother had the world’s biggest pantry on the west side of her long kitchen with a door opening onto the side street, as this had been the doctor’s office. I remember that it had two small rooms, evidently the reception room and the examining room. As families are wont to do, mine filled these rooms with all manner of overflow, from foodstuffs to canning supplies, and it was a forbidden, hence favorite place for a child to explore.
Being an apartment dweller, my mind cannot grasp the storage possibilities of such a home. The large hall closet was another favorite objective for a child. Stuffed with linens, it also held the secret stash of Christmas presents hidden it the dark recesses of its loaded shelves. Of course, the house only had the small clothes closets of its day, so the wide hallway also held several “wardrobes” to hold our excess clothing.
Such was life in the old Thornhill house. My mother worked herself to death on it—I rarely remember any “house help”—and she proudly hosted her bridge club friends. I remember her dragging the old Hoover up the long staircase to vacuum the rose-carpeted treads, muttering imprecations against the big old house that she loved so much.
I also remember playing dolls with Shirley Mullins, one of my little neighbor friends, on the first landing. Shirley loved dolls, and Mother religiously bought me one every Christmas—until my dad gave me my first saddle and taught me how to ride. I think she gave it up then.
My big brother, eleven years my senior, had a large room upstairs, and being a teenager, he was notorious for sleeping late. My father finally had a loud buzzer installed in the hallway downstairs, with which my parents awakened him in the mornings, as the long staircase was a bit of a trek when the first few trips didn’t work. No one could sleep through that buzzer. Imagine how the mischievous little sister loved to reach as high as she could and blast that buzzer in his sleeping ear. It’s a wonder he didn’t kill me when we were both kids.
It was a wonderful old house. Aren’t memories precious? I’ll probably never see the inside of that house again, and now its days are surely numbered, but it gives me, at least, great pleasure to write down the details that are as clear to me as they were in the very late forties and fifties. I keep them in an electronic journal, which I call “Paris Diaries,” and perhaps some day someone will find them of interest.
Court House Petition
Posted 11.17.08 at 12:52 PMThanks to Glen Gambill for a significant gift to Aikin Regional Archives. The original document is a petition dated on January 5, 1869, protesting the move of the Court House to its present location:
“We the undersigned citizens of Lamar County would most respectfully protest the removal of the Court House from the Public Square, or the Square being appropriated for any other purpose, than that for which it was originally intended, And think if the Court House and Enclosure, is repaired, which can be done at a small expense, and kept in good condition would meet the required wants of the County for years to come, and thereby save the County the Enormous Expense of building a New House, which would not be realized from the sale of the Square—provided it should be sold.
“We find that nearly all towns & cities are expending vast sums of money to purchase ground for Public Squares & Public Buildings, And it seems to us, that the County now owns, the most convenient ground for this purpose, And that it would be doing a large portion of its Citizens great injustice to move the Court House, or appropriate the Square for any other purpose than that, for which it was legitimately intended.”
Among the 103 signatures are such well known Paris and Lamar County names as Stell, Wortham, Broad, Clement, Wright, Risinger, Bonner, Hancock, and Givens, to name but a few.
Names
Posted 11.12.08 at 3:42 PMI’m back after an extensive bout of eye surgery—and glad it’s behind me. I apologize for a lengthy hiatus in the journal.
The 2008 PJC homecoming has come and gone. This season of the year usually brings Bat reporters to the archives to research the naming of the PJC newspaper, which is clearly stated in our fiftieth anniversary history book, page 8, copies of which are still available. Believe me, this book contains everything you ever wanted to know about Paris Junior College—and then some. Working on the “book committee” will remain one of my most enduring memories of my time at PJC, but it was great fun, also, working with the other committee members: Bobby R. Walters, Dwight Chaney, Jo Ann Parkman, Paul Bailey, Marilee Miller, Marvin Gorley, and Rita Tapp. We were pleasantly immersed in nostalgia for many weeks.
I also received a request from Jeanne Kraft concerning how the Paris High School Owl got its name, and believe it or not, I found it in a Paris News article dated Oct. 19, 1955. In 1908 the PHS building burned to the ground. Classes had to be held in temporary quarters east of the school ground. One day Miss Sallie (Seckel) went to one of these buildings to teach her Latin classes. As she walked inside, she saw an owl hovering near the ceiling. Suddenly it swooped down and lighted on her arm. The boys in the class carried the owl outside and took its picture. Then, in 1913, when the first yearbook came out, the picture of the owl and the bird’s name was on the cover, and “The Owl” it’s been, ever since. And if you believe that one, you’re more gullible than I thought. The legend of how the Bat got its name is more believable. The early college was housed in a “dark, out-of-the-way, backdoor part of the high school building,” and someone dubbed PJC students as the “Junior College Bats.”
I didn’t have the honor of knowing Miss Sallie Seckel—I’m not “that” old—but I’m sure she was an outstanding teacher. She held out for 46 years! At her last commencement program, she said she wanted no weeping and wailing. She had just decided to get around to some of the things she had never had time to do while tending to her classroom duties. I love it—her retirement gift in 1948 was a radio! How times have changed.
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Home Front Letters: Carmel Vila
Posted 07.16.08 at 2:58 PMThanks to Carmel Vila, of Jefferson, La., for this unique description of the wartime dinners that her mother served to servicemen far from home. Paris is now anticipating the many soldiers who will be training at Camp Maxey, but let’s hope that the men and women don’t have to suffer politely such meals from well-intentioned “cooks” (about like me).
Generally there were at least five of them, and my mother would begin dinner with a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice, served in small jam glasses. She always put a sprig of mint on each glass, trying to make it festive and gay. Then she would present the baked chicken, her specialty, and one could always bet it was overcooked. It was dry, stringy, and tasteless, but the boys had been taught manners, and they smiled and said how really delicious it was. Then, of course, Mother would pass around the lumpy mashed potatoes, overly thick gravy, and overly large peas, since they were cheaper than the small ones ... The garlic bread was spread with heavy masses of butter and garlic, both needing to be melted much more than they had been, and sometimes an extra treat was a few corn muffins, burnt and hazy looking, but presented with a smile.
Along with the oversized peas, a bowl of fried carrots. Yes, you’ve read it correctly — fried carrots were passed, and everyone took as few as they could manage. Mother had read in McCall’s (a popular women’s magazine) how carrots could be cooked any number of ways, and the way she seemed pleased with was either boiled to pulp or fried black. The young men ate some of everything, no matter how it looked. It was a food comedy, and how they kept straight faces, I will never understand. Their faces must have hurt when they left my home.
Our dessert was always cut-up slices of watermelon, sometimes cubed, sometimes cut in shapes — one never knew what to expect. Many of these were Yankee boys and not watermelon eaters, but she would smile her sweet, southern smile and say, ‘Now don’t be bashful, son. Eat your nice melon, and then we’ll have coffee.’ They would push it around the plate, and in the end, they would squeeze the juice out, leaving only fiber floating on the plate. Watermelons were very cheap during those years and fed a multitude of folks. Each Saturday she purchased a mid-sized melon for thirty cents, and we had melon every day of the week. I grew to think everyone had melon as dessert.
Finally, after Mother and I cleared the dishes, she would bring out the coffee pot, which was old and dented, but she was convinced that the coffee which poured from it was the best that money could buy. Sometimes she would put whipped cream on top of the coffee, making it, in her eyes, much more festive, and she would then offer a ten cent bag of those vile little after dinner mints of pastel colors to end the dinner properly.
Sometimes the guys would help Mother with the dishes, and when all of the thanks had been said, and all of the repeat invitations had gone out for another Sunday dinner, the guys and I would walk down the block to my best friend’s house, where we were able to play records and dance in her basement. She always had Kool Aid and gingersnap cookies, and some of the other girls would come to dance as well. When the time came for the guys to take the bus back to camp, my mother was already making plans for the following week’s dinner. She worked from early Sunday morning until four in the afternoon on Sunday, but she was always ready with her dinner and enjoyed the young company that I brought. They adored her, and for years we received Christmas cards from some of them thanking her for her southern hospitality and her fine dinners.
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Home Front Letters: Joan Novak
Posted 07.14.08 at 10:59 AMJoan Novak writes from Baxter, Minn., that she was only 10 years old when the war began. Her mother will be 100 in December. However, Joan remembers much about those years.
“I do think the economy is going to have a severe setback some time in the future. It will not be as bad as the depression, but the younger set will be devastated. They are not used to going without. Too much easy credit is out there floating around to cover their every whim. I think it will be a good thing if it does not last too long. The world needs a ‘come-up-ance,’” she says.
I asked her what she remembered of women’s affairs during the war.
Comments: 0 | Read & Comment »Cosmetics were not a priority with me at age ten. Nylons were almost impossible to get ... Silk stockings were still in vogue (if you could get them). Leg makeup was used by the women. Some even drew lines down the back of the leg to make fake seams. Needed help and a steady hand for that.
When my mother worked in the defense plant, she sewed copper wires on the dials for submarines. It was piece work. They got paid for how much they put out. A quota was set, and if they went over, they got more money. The women had breaks of ten minutes in the morning and ten in the afternoon. They cut the cigarettes in half so they could finish smoking before the ten minutes were up. Bathroom smoking was permitted.
We did not have a car, but we lived close enough to work so my dad and mom could walk. They had an hour for lunch and came home to eat. Ma would prepare things to eat the night before, and I could finish cooking or heating the meal. When the factory whistle blew, every kid in the neighborhood knew they better be home for dinner.
The first big purchase after my mother went to work was a big white refrigerator. Up to that time, we used ice for keeping things cold. I remember taking the red wagon and walking to the ice house to buy a big block of ice. Then we would ask the clerk for a chip of ice to eat on the way home. Sure was glad to get a refrigerator.