high button shoes on little girls

My mother always told me about getting up on her grandmother's bed where Mama Barry would help her button her shoes.  I finally found this picture of Anna, on the right, with a neighbor's girl, both wearing the high-top buttoned shoes that well-to-do children all wore in those days.

Papa Barry my great grandfather

Papa Barry married Annie Barry in 1891.  He looked very different in later years.  First picture above shows Donald my grandfather holding Clare Jean, Ruth Barry Ricketts, my grandmother, Papa Barry with Anna Louise (my mother) standing at left front with Elna, her sister, next to her. 

Devil's Den revisited (earlier post from 2/14)

Another photo I found from the Devil's Den excursion by the Ricketts family and friends.  Anna Louise is on the far right, next to her is her sister, Elna Ricketts.

Snow in Comanche January 1943

On January 2, 1947 Aunt Laura wrote in her letter to Aunt Mamie:

"we are having the most beautiful snow.  It started New Years Eve and the forecast for tonight is more snow.  We (Ed and Laura) are carrying water to the chickens three times a day for three days so far."

We lived nearby Ed and Laura's place that year. Snow was and is so rare in Texas.  It was huge fun.  Here are a couple of pictures from that day. In January 1947 Bill was 4 and a half and I was 8 and a half.  Our birthdays are 4 days apart.

My mother's working life

Above is my mother's high school yearbook picture.  She graduated in 1931 at the age of 16.

Right away she went to work as a stenographer in the office of her father and his brother in Sherman, Texas.

Ann was a fast typist and even faster at shorthand (taking dictation the old-fashioned way.)  She sometimes wrote her notes to herself in shorthand.  Mother never had to ask for a job in her life.  

She was always in demand for her office skills.  She worked for Doctor Stout's clinic in Sherman where I was born. She was stenographer at the county welfare office in Comanche where my aunt was a caseworker during the 1950's.  She ran the office of Jake Varnell, attorney-at-law in Mineral Wells, Texas when my father went to work teaching school there.  And eventually she was secretary to the city manager in Mineral Wells.

607 Broadway in Clarksville

Clockwise from top left: Elna Ricketts, Grandpa John Barry, Anna Louise (my mother) and Clare Jean Ricketts in front of the family home at 607 Broadway in Clarksville. 

In  1990: Me, my granddaughter Margaret, and Mother (Anna Louise Ricketts) sitting on the steps of the house at 607 Broadway.  This house burned to the ground about 3 years after this photo was made.

Monkey Island

  My parents souvenir photos from "Monkey Island" wherever that is.  These were a huge source of amusement for me and my brother Bill every time we got out the family photo album.  We couldn't believe our parents could have been that silly!!!!

My first year

I was Thurston and Ann's first baby, born September 9, 1938.  Mother never had a formal portrait made of herself with me, but there are a handful of snapshots from that time.

For the first years of their marriage Thurston and Ann lived in south Texas, where he was sent by Texas Power & Light Company to sell appliances. Some of the  towns we lived in were Flatonia, Refugio, and Aransas Pass.  Mother was happier then than at any time in her life, she told me.  

The little dog in the lower picture was named Frito.  That's right....because she loved the little corn  chips that were already being sold, in some parts of Texas, in 1938.

Devil's Den outing 1927

Around 1927 or so, Donald and Ruth Ricketts took their girls on a vacation.

They went to a park in Arkansas called "Devil's

Den."  With them were a large group of friends, also Donald's brother Sam and his wife Ruby, and their two girls, Ona Mae and Marian.

In the photo of the large group, my mother Anna Louise is seated in the far left corner of the picture.



In the second picture at left, where Anna Louise is in the center, the couple on the left is Sam and Ruby Ricketts, and the couple seated on the rock are Ruth and Donald Ricketts.





Seated on the rock below are some friends and cousins.  On the far right is Anna Louise, in front of her is her sister Elna.

Among the bathing beauties in the picture below, Anna Louise is second from left.

on a country road....

Country road on what looks like Sunday afternoon in Red River County.  Left to right:
Elna, child of Ruth and Donald Ricketts, Alvina Barry, sister of my grandmother Ruth, and Mabel Barry, second sister of Ruth.  On right is Anna Louise Ricketts, my mother.

My parents' wedding

The date was June 12, 1937 when Thurston and Ann, my parents, had a double wedding with Mother's sister Elna, and her husband, Bronson Hanks.  They had zero money and so did their families, so they married in Tyler, at the home of Thurston's brother, my Uncle Watt, and his wife, Frankie Cash (more about them later.)

On their first anniversary both couples got together again and here are their pictures.  Mother was six months pregnant with me. I was born three months later on September 9, 1938.

How my father and mother first met in 1936

In 1936 Thurston had been traveling Texas with his brother for almost two years.  He sold electrical appliances for Texas Power & Light Company.

Somehow in Sherman, Texas he double-dated with a friend and met my mother, Anna Louise Ricketts.  She was petite and very smart.  At 16 she had finished high school and went to work in the insurance office that belonged to her father and his brother Sam.

I think it was love at first sight.