The Dallas Journal, Volume 53, 2007 Page: 106

                                
Remembering Mammaw

reason, before the end of WWII, she and
Virginia were back in Muskogee."
With the surrender of Japan's forces, by the end
of 1945, George returned home from the Pacific
Theatre. He and Flo settled in Muskogee for a
couple of years where Flo delivered her
youngest son, James Edward (Jimmy), in 1946.
The post-war years were promising, but
Muskogee was a small town and offered few
opportunities for work. Dallas was beginning to
explode with employment opportunities and,
being a larger city with more manufacturing
companies, George and Flo decided to move to
Texas.
Moving to Texas
By 1950, the family was living in one of the
several trailer courts established along West
Commerce St. in Dallas. Although Americans
have always been a migratory group, the 1950s
symbolized mobility more than ever before.
That decade is sometimes symbolized by the
sleek, silvery image of the AirstreamTM "house
trailer," the kind you could attach to the back of
a car and move across the country in style and
comfort. The image still evokes a romantic time
of freedom and carefree living. As a vacation
home, it was-and still is-a rather carefree
lifestyle. As a primary home in the 1950s,
well...that was a different story.
Trailer courts of the 1940s and 1950s were more
than just the RV parks of their time. They were
also semi-permanent home addresses for
transient workers and their families, the kind of
people that the more permanent, more up-scale
citizens of the city called "trailer trash." Trailer
courts, of the kind found along West Commerce
St., were not vacation rest stops. They served
" I never recalled Mammaw mentioning WWII
shortages and rations as a factor in her learning to "make
do." George's military pay may have helped provide
while he was overseas. I also do not know if she worked
while George was overseas, but I assume that she must
have. Military pay, even for a sergeant, was meager
during WWII.

mostly the migrant population coming into
Dallas looking for jobs.
Paying about $15 a month, you could rent a
small, one room trailer (150-250 square feet).
This included electricity and water, but you had
to buy gas for the cook stove and oil for the
heater. Bathrooms, if the trailer had one, were
not of the style and amenities that we know
today. It would have had a small walled-off
section with a port-a-potty toilet that was
emptied once a day at the community sewage
facilities, and, maybe, maybe, you'd have a sink
for dishes. Bathing was done in a wash tub. The
same wash tub served as laundry facilities, as
well. Clean, wet laundry was hung from a
corded line strung between two posts or trees.
Sometime in the winter of 1949, George and
Flo rented three tiny trailers, none with a
"bathroom," for their extended family. The
trailers were parked at the Cafe Trailer Court on
W. Commerce St.,12 just over the bridge from
downtown Dallas. Sons, Bill and Don, resided
in one trailer. Daughter Virginia and newborn
granddaughter, Pat, occupied another. George,
Flo, and two-year-old Jimmy, occupied the third
trailer. The summer of 1950 was reportedly no
hotter than other summers in North Texas. Still,
the heat of the Texas sun on the metal roof and
walls of those tiny trailers turned them into
human ovens. The heat was one of Don's
strongest memories of that time. He recalled
"That [living in the trailer] was very hard for
Mom. These were very small trailers and no air
conditioning. Mom had to do the wash on a
hand rub board and wash tub." Showers and
toilet facilities were located elsewhere in the
park.13
While living in the Caf6 Trailer Court, George
found work with Dallas Power (later to become
12 Despite the fact that it was on the edge of downtown
Dallas, maps and documents described it as a "rural
precinct."
13 Cole, Don email messages. Subject: Flossie Flanary
(Mammaw).

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Dallas Journal 2007