Oral History Interview with Floyd R. Thomas, February 18, 2009 Page: 4
This text is part of the collection entitled: Rescuing Texas History, 2011 and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.
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Okay, fine. Just start out and tell me about when you were born and what happened.
Mr. Thomas
Alright, Sir. Now let me say this to you first: My short-term memory in the last year is terrible.
I walk out of a room, go to the next room and, what did I come in here for? But my long-term
memory seems to be very, very good because it was so, I guess so embedded in my mind that I
wasn't about to forget it over the last 75 years. I was born in Houston, Texas 7-3-26 to Wallace
Raymond Thomas and Louise Holloman. My father was half Blackfoot Indian and he loved the
mountains. Soon after I was born, I was brought back to the Homestead at the Black Range
Mountains in the Wahoo Canyon, New Mexico to live with my parents. My sister, Joyce, was
born 2 years after me. We lived in the homestead until I was about six years old, around six
years I remember. Those memories, while I was there I could remember being tied in a metal
tub so as not to get to close to the mill or the logs. It was about six years old, maybe five, since
my sister was four or five, this sawmill had a great big pulley on it going around and around and
around. And I always liked to come up and throw rocks at it. Well when the rock hit it, it would
kick it back like a bullet, so my mother tied us both into a tub, a big metal tub, around the arms
so we couldn't get out of that tub if we were going to stay near the mill. And that's just a
consequence. We tried to stay away from the mill because we didn't wanna be tied in that tub.
There was cliffs, big cliffs, just east of our house down in the valley you know, by a stream run
by the house, a log cabin, and I'd like to go down to those cliffs so I could climb around and look
around. One day I was up on that cliff, and I was way up on top of it, my mother was coming
out of the cabin or something and I threw a rock down and waved at her. And boy oh boy
when I get in that night, she gave me a whipping with a razor strap that I won't forget, didn't4
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Misenhimer, Richard & Thomas, Floyd R. Oral History Interview with Floyd R. Thomas, February 18, 2009, text, February 18, 2009; Fredericksburg, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth193889/m1/4/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.