Lesson III, Second Time Around Going Back Before I was Born
Daddy, second son of Mr. R.A. and Agnes Horlock of Navasota. Family: Bobby Horlock, Emma Horlock born to R. A. Horlock’s first wife. Second Wife: Agnes, two sons, Arthur and Edwin and five daughters making nine (the tenth child died) lived in a five bedroom and one bathroom home on a whole lot that had only one other small home on the corner (youngest daughter occupied it later–Iscah.)
R. A. had a cotton seed mill, ice and soda water factory, Arthur’s Schooling– private school when very young. Don’t know how far he went in public school.
Arthur, handsome, friendly, good dancer, his younger brother Edwin was a pianist. Steady in his work. Not much money when he married. He smoked cigarettes.
He went to Houston as a young man and had a job with other young men in an Insurance Co. Met my mother, Lillie Fisher, fell in love. Had a big wedding. Eight bridesmaids dressed in dresses such as the Flora Dora girls wore in 1900’s. After the honeymoon they came back to Navasota and lived at the big house. He was used to big family, roomy home, big meals either in the dining room with guests or mostly at the long table in the breakfast room. There were always plenty of black servants who loved the family and helped raise the children. The little old black woman who helped raise Daddy was “Aunt Dean.”
Lillie and Arthur go to Navasota after the wedding April 28, 1908 to live with Grandma and Grandpa Horlock. I know nothing until I was four years old. By that time Mama and Daddy had moved into a cottage. I don’t remember anything about the big house until six years later when I went to visit when Grandpa took me on the train from Houston to Navasota for two weeks.
Daddy never cooked when we lived on McKinney because the kitchen had only the minimum accoutrements. After a fire in 1914 or 1915, the McKinney House changed into a duplex. I think the kitchen downstairs was made from a pantry; it held only a sink, a stove, a table and a cabinet, all close together. A built-on porch became our dining room because the regular dining room became a bedroom. But when we lived in the upstairs duplex above Aunt Edith, we had a large kitchen. I remember Daddy cooked Sunday meals. His favorite meal consisted of Pot Roast and potatoes in which he added allspice. I used this recipe all during my cooking.Daddy’s family, six girls and three boys, had music and dancing. Uncle Edwin played the piano. Aunt Emma played the organ at church. Daddy brought me up teaching me to jig at one and a half years old. Then all through my childhood he danced with me at weddings and parties (I don’t remember many–people were too poor to have parties). The main place we heard music besides grandpa’s music boxes were the Sunday concerts in the City Park which was open to the public. The band sat in a gazebo and the audience sat in folding chairs. I used to go in back of the chairs and dance on the grass to the band music. I would be so tired afterwards Daddy had to carry me the three blocks home.
I never took dancing lessons. When time came for me to go to dances, I knew how. walked to work, to church, to school, to shop.
Since we had no car until I was a teenager and learned to drive at 14, everyone Daddy always knew directions and how to get places and resented anyone telling him how to go anyplace. (I am good about knowing directions but my children seem to have trouble with finding directions).
Living in Houston with Grandma and Grandpa Fisher.
The four bedrooms and two sleeping porches on 416 McKinney on which lot now stands the new part of the Houston Public Library.
My father called me “Mrs.” a lot because I was always dressing up and havinga show in our two bedrooms or playing ladies.
I remember him warmly and lovingly. He walked to work at the Texas Company on San Jacinto and walked home to lunch. After work on hot summer days Fisher (three years younger) would wait happily for Daddy to walk us over to the City Park three blocks away. We would be in bathing suits, carrying our water wings. The pool was small but adequate enough for us to learn to swim on our water wings.
When I was eight or ten I would walk with Fisher to Sunday School at Christ Church, then go over to the Texas Company and take the elevator up to Daddy’s office where he would give us a nickel, and we would go back down to the refreshment stand to buy candy. Then he would walk home with us. The Texas Company was about eight or ten blocks from home. I remember one day Daddy took me to the drug store–about three blocks away– and bought me some tiny candy teddy bears– brown, tasting of chocolate; pink, tasting of strawberry; and yellow, tasting of lemon.
When I was 12, Mama and Daddy had a Chevrolet and took me to Girl Scout Camp. The first girl Scout Camp was at a Boy Scout Camp on Trinity River but after that every summer camp would be at the Bay. I remember the name of one camp -El Jardin. Mama and Daddy became involved in all my activities. We were a close knit family.
Daddy brought his work home at night in our bedroom. He was an accountant which meant long columns of figures. He was a good typist but to keep the columns exactly, he had a “line-a-time” with which you pressed a handle to push the gadget up one line.
Daddy began to talk about his boss, Mr. Emerson. He hated his job. He was always having to work overtime. Finally he felt badly and decided to quit the Texas Company. They did not tell me much; they thought that a child should never be bothered with unpleasant circumstances. Daddy quit the Texas Co., sold his stock, took the money and began to build houses in Riverside Terrace. He had a good builder in charge, and Mama picked out paint and wallpaper, but Daddy was inexperienced in building houses; he was too good to people who demanded more than what was stipulated in the contract.
When Daddy drove to Riverside Terrace in his Chevrolet, with Trotter, my dog, every day he would often take me and pick up Beatrice Jantzen who came to McKinney on the streetcar. She would get out and drive with us to Rice. Most of the time we went on the Streetcar to Eagle and caught the trolley to Rice.
When I was chosen to represent the Girl Scouts at an International Girl Scout Camp in Switzerland, Mama and Daddy were very proud of me and paid my way; the Houston Girl Scouts could not afford it. I don’t know how my folks could afford it at this time. I guess they borrowed the $450. 00 for the camp and the train fare to New York. Daddy planned the train schedule, so I could stop in Dallas and pick up Mary Alice, another representative of Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Then he routed me to Chicago to see Aunt Aggie, then he routed me and Mary Alice to see Niagara Falls, then New York City to meet the rest of the 27 girls and 3 leaders.
Daddy lost the building business. He began to drink. We had moved from McKinney to a two story brick home on Rosewood in Riverside Terrace which had come back to him. We stayed there while I was a senior at Rice and graduated in 1930. The Depression began to envelop us. We moved out of the brick home to an apartment. Then we moved out of the apartment to the upper duplex over my aunt Edith who owned this duplex and remained there. We never had a home of our own.
Daddy got sick. No jobs were available. Mama worked in a real estate company, but made little money. I got a job at the Girl Scout Headquarters at $75.00 a month which hardly paid my streetcar fare back and forth. Then I got a job in a Steamship Co. between New Orleans and Houston which fell apart. Carl and I married. Daddy took me down the aisle at Christ Church at my wedding. He had been drinking. Everyone was afraid he wouldn’t make it. He made it, but he gradually withdrew from me, and I from him. I was sorry. I was unhappy with him but I was determined that he should not mar my wedded happiness. We withdrew from each other. It did not bother me, because I had Carl, and lots to look forward to. That was April 27, 1933.
In 1935 Elaine was born. My mother came to see us and be with us, but Daddy was drawing far apart from us. When Elaine was five, she was taken to see Daddy who had T. B., but could not go beyond the bedroom door. She had to talk to him far away from any germs.
When I became pregnant with Carol in 1941, I was told not to go to Daddy’s funeral in July as I was too close to having the baby. It wouldn’t be safe so I stayed home instead of driving to Navasota to Daddy’s funeral.
Daddy was a gentleman. He never uttered bad words. He loved Mama and Fisher and me. The fact that he was the second son instead of the first played a bad part in his upbringing. He was always passed over for good things. It all went to the first son, Uncle Bobby. Then another thing that pulled him down was his smoking and drinking, his unhappiness with his boss, and his getting T.B. which was rampant then. The worst economical misfortune, the Depression kept him out of work, too. All these things caused him to drink which turned him into another person, a person we didn’t know or love. So the only way we can live with this is to remember him when he was his own lovable self.