The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 60, No. 103, Ed. 1 Sunday, February 28, 1982 Page: 25 of 71
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History Month seeks to honor.
February was set aside as a time
to contemplate the many ways
black Americans have enriched
the life of our nation.
Butpiack History Month Is also
a Ume for people to rediscover
their own roots and traditions:
national glory, certainly glow, ■
with the memory of life well lived. KB mm V
ELMORE operated Elmore's Cafe in Barrett Sta-
lion and J D Walker Community Non lor a number of years. He says It was the second
Center in McNair have played business started in town and many people remember
host to special programs aimed at eating there, including his friend Ora Eleby who says, “It
recapturing the memory and the was the best eating place around here.”
magic of “the old timey days.”
am***.
THE BAt TOWN SDN
George Washington Carver
revolutionized life In the South
with his research Into peanuts
and sweet ^potatoes Dr. Percy
Julian developed an Inexpensive
drug to treat glaucoma. Gwen-
dolyn Brooks won a Pulitzer Prize
for her poetry. And Mary
Bethune, born a slave, became
the first president and co-founder
of BeUiune-Cookman College.
These are Just a few among the'
UDservance inspires raiK ui
"The old timey days" at Bar-
rett Station don't fit well into any
scheme of exact dates. In a world
where one generation of good peo-
ple raised on hard work and folk
traditions passed into the next,
there was no such thing as a
decisive historical date.
For instance, senior citizens at
Riley Chambers Center men
tion how hard it was during the
depression, but "the depression"
seems more a state of mind, a
memory of times that were “real
hard, but real good,” than it does
any particular decade.
Likewise, people who have liv-
ed in Barrett Station for many
years have a hard time saying ex-
actly when things changed from
the way they were in the old days
to the way they are now. All they
know is that a sleepy town where
every body was kin to everybody
else and life was lived as it had
been for over 100 years gave way
to a new community with streets
full of brick houses and new faces.
And not just new faces. It Is the
unanimous feeling of a group of
seniors who gather at Riley
Chambers Center that something
has been lost in the quality of life
itself at Barrett.
The old days may have been
hard, but no one locked their
doors, there was no crime, and a
man could get everything he
needed to live, except sugar and
coffee, from the land itself.
Yet modernization, be it good or
bad, is a recent thing at Barrett.
Even 20 years ago, most people in
town lived much the same way
their grandmothers and great-
grandmothers had, preserving
folk ways long lost to other
segments of American society.
Shirley Williams has lived in
Barrett Station all her life and is a
direct descendant of Harrison
Barrett, the first man to settle the
area in the mid-1800s. She heads
up the Chambers Center senior
to get onions, mustard greens,
sweet potatoes or anything else.
“We’d kill a hog and make
bacon. We’d cover the meat with
salt and a towel and leave it for a
few days, then we’d turn it over
and leave it sitting a few more.
It’d come out just like store
bought.”
No one had refrigerators, so it
was common to smoke meat.
Cooking was done on wood stoves,
fueled by lumber from nearby
forests.
Senior citizen program partici-
pant Ora Lee . Brady remembers
her mother cooking sausage, then
pouring hot grease over it.
Prepared in this way, the meat
would stay fresh for long periods
of time.
“Food didn’t spoil back then the
way it does now,” Mrs. Williams
says.
By now, a handful of women
have gathered around the table,
sharing reminiscences with shin-
ing eyes. They agree
wholeheartedly. Now that they
think of it, something has chang-
ed. Food didn’t spoil in the “old
timey days” the way it does now.
Several possible reasons are of-
fered for this. Perhaps it is the an-
tibiotics and other drugs they feed
animals these days. Perhaps it is
the modern fertilizer.
“Food tasted better back then,”
says Mabel Clabome. “I don’t eat
any meat these days.”
Elvira Ford remembers
washing clothes in a big black pot. Il
“We’d boil our sheets — they
came out clean and white,” she
says. “We made soap with lye and
animal fat and ironed clothes with
those old irions you had to heat in
the fire.
“Most of us slept on mattresses
stuffed with corn shucks. We even
had mattresses and pillows stuff-
ed with moss. You’d just pull the
■SuMhy, February It, HP
TORT _
KHuarrs
citizens program and says the
biggest changes, such as increas-
ed crime, have only come in the
last five years
Mrs. Fred Hunter, a participant
in the senior citizens program,
remembers, “There was nothing
much at Barrett Station when my
husband and I came here in 1951.
No streets worth a dime, none of
them paved. We didn’t get mail
delivery. They used to just drop it
all off at the Post Office and we’d
have to go get it.
“Water pipelines were so sfnall,
when a neighbor was using water,
you didn’t have enough for a bath.
We didn’t have any sewer. Didn’t
have any street signs, either, so
you didn’t know where you were
going. But people were more
friendly when I came here than
they are now.”
An adequate water and sewage
system for Barrett Station was
not completed until 1978.
Remembering life in the ’40s
HENRY NAPOLEON is Barrett Station’s oldest citizen.
He will officially celebrate his 105th birthday this year,
but the exact date of his birth is unkown and many people
in town believe him to be several years older. He came to
Barrett Station in the 1920’s, when most people in the area
were descendants or relatives of Harrison Barrett, who
first settled the area in the mid 1800’s.
while trying to sleep on a cotton
mattress.
“There were hardly any mos-
quitoes back in Barrett in those
days,” says Mrs. Williams,
remembering her childhood in the
1940's. “So we didn’t put screens
on the windows. On summer
nights the air used to come in so
clean and cool, we didn’t need
fans.”
She remembers putting milk in
the bottom of the well where it
would stay cool and sweet.
“We used to drink cold water
id La. *
Sewage treatment has been a
crucial problem in Barrett Sta-
tion for the last 15 years, but the
women gathered at Riley
Chambers Center remember
older times when outside toilets
didn’t pose such overwhelming
problems.
“We used lime to keep them
from smelling,” Mrs. Brady says.
“People weren’t sick coming up
in the old days,” says Mrs.
Williams. She remembers many
home remedies based on herbs
and other ingredients from ‘.he
natural environment. When she
had a fever, Henry “Papa Gete”
Alfred would make a linamer.t of
leaves and wrap it around her
head. He also grew an ice vine,
which was always cold to the
touch and was excellent for br-
inging a fever down.
“We didn’t know what a doctor
was," she says. “We didn’t have
to go to a doctor for the flu and all
that junk. Our main medicine was
castor oil. We got it twice a year.”
Gertrude Bradley, recognized
as one of the old timers in Barrett
Station recalls plowing with an ox
as a young girl.
“And we drove a surrey,” she
says. “When we saw a car we’d
run away. Cars scared us when
we were kids cause we didn’t even
know what they were. We’d go
home and say, ‘Momma, what’s
wrong with that surrey, it doesn’t
have any horses.”
Mrs. Bradley and Mabel
Clabome, another acknowleged
old timer who grew up in Loui-
siana, both remember wearing
ribbon stockings, high-top shoes
with buttons on the side and blue
denim dresses.
“Girls and boys didn’t play
together in school,” Mrs.
Claborne says. “It wasn’t like it is
now. We had to be in bed at 9 p.m.,
cause the next morning we'd
leave for school at 6 a.m. We
walked five miles each way.
“School went from 8 to 3, but on-
ly three months a year. When we
got home from school, we’d work
in the fields.”
Mrs. Claborne says most people
worked in the fields on Saturday
until noon. The afternoon was
spent with laundry or yard work.
“We’d go to church Sunday
from.early, morning to 3 p.m.,”
mud was so- deep we’d walk to
church barefoot and carry our
shoes. When we got there, we’d
wipe our feet and put our shoes on
for the church service.
“We enjoyed church when we
were kids, there weren’t any pic-
ture shows back then, and we
were glad to go to church, cause
then we wouldn’t have to work in
the fields.”
Mrs. Claborne says she worked
so hard in the fields as a young
girl that she’d often run into- a
ditch and hide. “I’d pray,,‘Lord,
let it rain,’ and usually he’d
answer hnd it would.”
All the women agreed
something has been lost with the
oassing years.
“Crime has really increased
here in the last four years,” says
Mrs. Williams. “It used to be you
knew everyone in town. Now lots
of people don’t even know their
neighbors. People used to get
together every weekend and the
kids were so well behaved.”
When pressed about the good
things progress has brought to
Barrett Station, the group agrees
there is something to be said for
better jobs, nicer homes and in-
side bathrooms.
“People have better jobs now,”
says Mrs. Williams. “But Uncle
Sam takes half of what they
make. Used to be able to buy a
week’s supply of groceries for $5.
Nowadays, after you’re done with
the bills, you still got nothing.”
“I think it’s harder now than it
was back yonder,” says Ora Lee
Brady.
“If we could go back to those
old timey days, kids would be too
tired at the end of the day to hit
the streets and cause trouble,”
Mrs. Williams says.
McNair
Settled
In 1920s
It It • matter of record that
Barrett Station waa first settled In
the mid 1800's by Harrison Bar-
rett and his family. The area of-
hunting and fn
risen was born in Louisiana and
brought to Texas as a slave for a
family In the Goose Creek area.
Barrett worked hard. In a few
years he had amassed enough
money to buy 400 acres from the
Reuben White League, site of
present-day Barrett Station. The
land sold for 50 cents an acre,
Harrison constructed a saw mill »
and oversaw a self-sufficient
community of family and
relatives.
Everyone in Barrett Station
was a Barrett or a relative until
the early I900’s when new jobs at
Humble’s refinery brought in peo-
ple from many outlying areas,
such as Cleveland where work
was scarce.
But if Barrett Station has a con-
■Bpsiteypf tJiiyfon,
McNair does not. Many of Ute
.pmmui •"-'-laUrtad•„»>
"settimgmMCNainh mrTOorare ~~ ——
no longer known. As Mrs Pearl
Price, a McNair resident, says,
"All those citizens who were here
from day one are dead now.”
J.D. Walker, for whom the com-
munity center in McNair is nam-
ed. has been in McNair since 1945.
as long as anyone in town.
"When I first moved here, this
is the information 1 received:
most of the black people working
for Humble Oil in the '20s lived in
little shotgun houses near where
the Baytown Post Office is today.
When Humble began to grow, the
community was relocated out
here, though some people who
had lived near the Post Office
moved to other parts of Baytown.
“McNair was developed by
Howard K. Johnson. When he first
started, he just sold people lots.
Later, he gave one lot free for
every lot bought. That’s why most t*
people out here have double lots."
Harlem Elementary School was
founded in 1928 and was an all-
day it serves as a magnet school
for the school district.
Over the years, citizens of
McNair have had to struggle with
many of the same problems as
citizens of Barrett Station.
Sewage and water lines were non-
existent or woefully deficient un-
til the last decade.
Jim Williams; who has lived in
McNair since 1948, remembers
people having to go to Highlands
to get water, and then having to
carry it all the way back to
McNair in buckets and cans.
Riley Chambers Community
Center in Barrett Station and J.D.
Walker Community Center and
Edna Mae Washington Park in
McNair are concrete proof of
standard of living advancements
these communities have made in
recent years. Riley Chambers
director Howard Sampson and
J.D. Walker director Arthur C.
Lilly both express gratitude to
Precinct 2 Commissioner Jim
Fonteno for bringing the centers
to the communities.
“The commissioner has been
the catalyst for all this,” says Lil-
ly, waving his arm across the 33
acres under development at J.D.
Walker Center. “He’s made the
park and center come into being.
“Before the center was finished
in 1979, we had nowhere to come,
nothing but school grounds on
which to meet. This center is used
extensively seven days a week —
everything from wedding recep-
tions and, church,services to town
meetings arid dances.”
Both community centers have
active programs for senior
citizens, where the old timers,
people who remember a world
washed away by time, can meet
to share memories of the past and
hopes for the future.
moss off the trees and let it dry.
JIM WILLIAMS has lived in McNair Since 1948 and has Then about once a year, you’d
seen many advancements in the community since the have to pull it out of the pillow or
days when streets were unpaved and water often had to mattress and fluff it up again.”
be brought into town in buckets. He worked at Exxon’s p“" w’",Qmc ,0"',h0 anH
cotton bolls
Text And Photos By Ch uck Raison
Baytown*Refinery for 37 years, retiring as a harness pXdhfthTback'bymb6r bein§
%■■■]
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Brown, Leon. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 60, No. 103, Ed. 1 Sunday, February 28, 1982, newspaper, February 28, 1982; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1019733/m1/25/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.