THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

INTERVIEW WITH: Osjetea Briggs (Limestone and Anderson [Osheetal Counties) DATE: June 21 1988

PLACE: Palestine, Texas

INTERVIEWER: Joan Ballard

JB: Osjetea, we've been talking about so much ahead of time, let's go on now.

OB: Since we were talking about Limestone County, where I grew up, actually, this Saturday, June 25, will be the yearly memorial service at Old Bethel Cemetery. It's down in the southeast corner of the county. They are also going to have a reunion of the Kickapoo School, so-called, because my grandfather was a Kickapoo Choctaw Indian. That Kickapoo was a smaller tribe of the big tribe. And because of his helping to build that school, they always referred to it as

Kickapoo. And there has not been any school in that o ld

two-room schoolhouse since 1935. Even the building is gone.

But three years ago somebody said: Let's try to have a reunion together with the memorial service at the cemetery

because everybody who has loved ones in that cemetery also

went to that school and nearly everybody bur ied in that

cemetery went to that school, for that ma tter .

So we called a reunion. We called it The Kickapoo

Legion, because that means the survivors, you know. And ,

now there hadn't been any school there since 1935 and this

was 1985, fifty years later. BRIGGS 2

OB: Thirty four students and one teacher showed up at that memorial service.

So we continue to have it each year. Now it is a

memorial service and the Kickapoo Legion has their yearly

get-together, right out in the hot sun . Well , we do have a

little arbor to keep some of the sun off. We have the same

old church benches that once happened to be in the old

church that has long since been torn down . The church that

was at the graveyard. We have those benches under this arbor and the survivors of that area come to pay tribute to their dead. We have a little program, have much singing, spread dinner under the trees on long tables; we have to

make the table longer each year.

We always have it on the fourth Saturday of June and

it's really fascinating. If you could just have a story of

all of those people. Some of them are descendants of the

survivors of Fort Parker , which is a l so not too far away as

the crow flies from where the cemetery and old school once

stood. And, the Plummers , especially , were my cousins.

This was Rachel Pluruner's family who was also kidnapped

along with Cynthia Ann Parker. Anyway, it's the story, even

the Plummer descendants. It's real interesting.

And I'm the president of the Old Bethel Cemetery

Association and the Kickapoo School group now. Of course, I

don't know how many years, twenty years I guess, that I've

been the president of the Association. This means everybody

that has kin that are buried in the cemetery is a member of

the Old Bethel Cemetery Association. This is a perpetual

loving care thing. This is something the big BRIGGS 3

OB: cities don't have. What we all did was to pool some

money and put it in a trust fund that would draw interest

and keep up the cemetery with the interest that we have on

the money. This way, the principal can never be touched.

And even if some of the younger people don't keep on meeting

and keep on carrying on the tradition that we have set a

hundred years ago, well, the money will be there so that it

can be handled and the cemetery is always immaculate.

JB: It will always still be maintained.

OB: But it will be maintained by the fact that we all

pooled our money to provide a trust fund for that purpose

and that purpose alone. It's quite strange how we select

our board of directors. When somebody dies, they have told

somebody who they want to take their place. You don't

choose somebody because they are popular, you choose them

because you know they'll be there and that they will do what

they are supposed to do as long as they live. If they get

down sick or something and want to pass it on to somebody

while they are still living well they just say: I've chosen

to fill my shoes so-and-so, and that person is the trustee

in their stead. And it depends on how many graves you have,

how interested they think you are. If you have enough

graves they know you'll be there, don't you see. A person

who just had one grave out there, well, they might think,

well, they might be inclined to forget old Cousin So-and-so,

you know, but they wouldn't forget if they had all their kin

there, or most o f their kin. It is really something to know BRIGGS 4

OB: that this still exists in this world, perpetual loving

care. JB: Are most of them there the Indian descendants? OB: No, no, no, no. I'm the only Indian there. My

grandfather was the only Indian in the ... Well, now, there is another family that has a little bit of Indian heritage.

I did't know just how much . But I'm the only one walking

around in braids, let's put it that way. But, it's not a

bunch of Indians, no. There all kinds and creeds, and

colors.

JB: Just local residents, or citizens. OB: People that live in the area.

JB: Who lived in this area.

OB: A lot of them are. Some of them come from across the

United States to be there at that time. They come from

every place. I would never have dreamed we'd have had

thirty-four people that once went to that school, plus a

teacher, but we did.

That's a picture of the old church. It was a Methodist

church. But people of all denominations come to the •.. our

song books carry hymns from all denominations. And everybody

sings. They don't sing well but they sing loud and we enjoy

it very much. And it's hot, very hot, and everybody brings

food, iced tea, and everybody enjoys it. And you've never

seen so much hugging in all your life. That's enough about

that. I get carried away because it has been so much a part

of my life - the cemetery has. JB: Right. BRIGGS 5

OB: And the inspiration that my grandpar ents, these were my maternal grandparents that were the Indians, and had a lot

of influence.

JB: And that is where you first went to school, was this

school?

OB: No, I didn't go to Kickapoo School, because the river

was the boundary line. I was in the Groesbeck Independent

School District. I first went to Groesbeck School. I didn't go to Kickapoo School, but my mother did and my older

brothers and sisters did, and all of my cousins did, most of

them. But, because Mama went there and my two older sisters

and my older brother went there, well, I felt a special

kinship, and I have visited in the school.

We always got Washington's Birthday off at my school

and Mama would load us kids up and take us over to Old

Bethel so we could spend the day at Old Bethel School with my cousins, so we would know how important that school was

to her. They would seat seven rows of children like the

1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades in one room and

then the high school grades in the other room .

Mama could just tell you what date anything happened.

When we'd be studying our lessons and say something about

what happened such-and-such a time, she'd say: Oh, yes, that

happened so-and-so. And I'd say: Mama, how in the world can

you remember the events in history so well. She'd say:

Well, after you sit there in that one room and hear it, for

instance at the 7th grade, well you hear it for seven years

before you get to it. BRIGGS 6

OB: You hear what the teacher is teaching the seventh graders down on the end of the line, don't you know. By the time you get there you already know it. Or the grades in between. You know it beforehand and then you hear it reviewed in the years afterwards, don't you see. Say, for instance, the third grade. Before you get to be a third grader, you have already memorized it and then from there on you hear it every year, you know. So naturally it stays with you.

JB: It's reinforced.

OB: You get to be that is education at its very best.

JB: It sure is.

OB: At its very best. Now, in Groesbeck, since we knew so well - we had visited Old Bethel School where MaMa went to school, we knew so well. And then we went to Groesbeck

School . This is where we could be warm through and through

in the wintertime. Didn't even have to have your coat on.

At home all the heat we had was the fireplace, in this old

ramshackled house. And we'd sit in front of the fireplace

and our legs would burn and our back would freeze. We would keep our coat on even in the house. And frequently we had W:noo~s the ~illews stuffed up with pillows. If the windowpane

would break out, we couldn't afford a new windowpane so we

just poked (we always had plenty of pillows we made

ourselves) just poke a window full of pillow and it kept out

the snow and the wind.

But when we got to school, they had indoor potties.

This is why I made such good grades, you BRIGGS 7

OB: see. I'd wait until I got to school if I possibly could. I'd wait until I got to school. And then you would be warm and you could go to the potty inside and they had nice soft tissue. You did not have to use the Sears,

Roebuck catalog. Of course, that was in the days before they had so many colored pages. The slick pages, you can't use those for potty paper.

JB: You can't use those.

OB: You can't use those. It's absolutely impractical . But we l~ved school, all of us did, and we made the best grades. I was valedictorian of my class when I graduated from the

7th grade. I didn't get to be valedictorian. I made the highest grades - it's based on a four-year course of study - and I graduated in three years, and I didn't -- because they allowed me to take more subjects. If you make an average above 90, they graded in numbers then, they didn't grade in

A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3, 4. They graded in numbers; 100 was perfect. And if I got less than 90 I would be devastated on even a test of any sort. I made less than 90 a time or two when I was in high school on physics examinations, 'cause I didn't like physics. And, I couldn 't retain it, it was not my thing.

By then, history was my love, and English. My 7th grade English teacher had insisted that I enter an essay

contest in the 7th grade because she couldn't get anybody else to do it. It was an Interscholastic League contest and

I didn't want to do it. Miss Georgia Hayes insisted that I

do it. She said: "You are the only student that I have that BRIGGS 8

OB: I can make do it. The others are really not talented

enough, I don't think. I believe you could do it if you'd just tryf I said:"Miss Georgia, I have no imagination. I

have no imagination whatsoever." She said:"How do you know you don't?" I said:"I've had to deal with facts all my life.

I had no time to create an imagination. If I happen t o draw

a subject at the Interscholastic League that is not based on facts I'll be lost. You will be ashamed of me. And I don't

want to do something that I couldn't do well." She insisted:

"You have to do it. I don't care whether you win or lose.

I want you to endure." I said:"Well, endure I can. You have

said the magic words. I can endure."

So I was sent to the Interscholastic League to

represent our school in the county's Interscholastic League meet. And we had to draw from a hat the subjects and I drew

George Washington. And of course, being the good student of history, I had remembered the year he was born and the year

he died, most especially the year he died. It was December

14, which was my birthday, 1799. And I didn't know too much

about the details of the Revolutionary ~qar in which he

participated, in which he was our commander in chief, but I

knew enough that I could throw in a fact or two.

But I started my essay off: It was the last month and

the last year of the century. And I described the snow as

it fell softly at Mount Vernon and the carriages that went

into the big gate: His relatives and his friends that were

going to pay him tribute as he lay dying. And that he died almost in the BRIGGS 9

OB: l as t hour of the day of the night, that night. Just before midnight he died. But in somewhere I threw in all

this business about crossing the Delaware and being elected

president and how he presided at the convention when they did the constitution bit, you know. Then I ended it with

the same sentence I had begun it with: It was the last hour

of the last day of the century and the snow was falling

softly, and the father of our country lay dying. And I won

first place in the county.

JB: How wonderful.

OB: In the Interscholastic League meet on something as dull

as a little subject of history, don't you know, would have

been. So I guess that's what inspired me to write. Because

then when I was in high school I went ahead and entered the

essay contest and I always did well. And I always wrote

better than I did anything else, but I never followed it as a profession until I came to Anderson County, and the editor

of a little weekly newspaper up in the north end o f the

county said to me:"Why don't you go down to Elkhart and do a newspaper for those poor people down there that don 't have a

voice. 1I

And of course I'd been a photographer and artist all my

life. That's how I'd made a living. And I said:"Do a

newspaper? Why I couldn't do that." He said:"Why I don't

know why you couldn't. I'd print it for you. Just go down

and check it out and see who all you could get for

advertisers and the peopl e would love it. You know they

would love it and of course you could do it." I said:"But I BRIGGS 10

OB: don't have a degree in journalism." He said: "Who cares about a degree in journalism. Who'll know the difference?"

JB: \~ho' s gonna know?

OB: So, I did that, and I did it well.

JB: What year?

OB: 1963, '64 and '65. Three years. And it was the most fascinating thing I ever did. And it was an experience that was unforgettable. And it was good for me, because, actually , I am a very shy person. And I learned to stand up and say what my name was without falling on my face.

Something I never had been able to do. Because the first year that I did it, they invited me to speak to the midwinter convention of the Texas Press Association. That's where all those smart people go, you know. To see what the other smart people have learned. People that are accomplished, the real writers and the real editors and the real publishers. And they had never seen the likes of me.

But because Athens Review did my printing, and they'd use my paper as a sort of an example to get job printing , most of all because my pictures were real good.

And when I went - I didn't go to the Frankston Citizen

to print it, which was the best thing that ever happened to me, because they were not equipped to print my pictures so well. But the Athens Review had off-set printing, which

could do justice to my pictures. And it turned out that the

editor didn't really want to, he didn't really think I would

do it, anyway. And when he said:"No , no , I can't do that,"

well, I didn ' t have any other BRIGGS 11

OB: recourse except to go t o the Athens Review and I didn't

know them. I never had met any of them or anything, but I

went up and presented it to the Athens Review and the man

said:"This I've got to see. You have no journalism

experience." I said: "But, if I can't write, I'll just make

the pictures a little bit bigger, and people will enjoy

looking at the pictures and reading the cut lines. Most

people, that's about all they do in a newspaper anyway." And

so he agreed as long as I walked in there with the money in

my hand on Wednesday afternoon late to pick up the paper,

well, they'd publish it. And I did it one week at a time

for three whole years and let my photography business go to

pot, o f course, because I didn't have time to write the

newspaper and make any pictures to pay for it. And of

course, when you are trying to compete with a daily

newspaper, a weekly -

JB: A weekly is hard.

OB: You can't do it. There's no way you can make a person

believe that a weekly paper would have all the impact that a

daily would. No, unless people keep the paper the whole

week and can look at it every day ~ of the week, whereas

they toss the other one out with the dead fish,or s omething.

But it really had an impact and I was able to speak to

the really brilliant people at the press associations. I

spoke to all of them that year at the North, and East Texas,

and South Texas and West Texas Press Association. And many

o f them other than the state organizations. After that I

would get a lot of speaking BRIGGS 12

OB: engagements, but I learned not to be scared to death in front of peopl e , which was really an accomplishment for me. It was worth all that it cost and all the money that I lost doing it. Money can be replaced, you know.

JB: Right .

OB: But experience - money can be replaced. And I lost money, o f course. Like I say, you can't get enough advertising in a weekly paper to compete with a fine local daily here in Anderson County. But the enjoyment and the things that I learned from it was worth every dollar that I lost and I'd do it allover again if I was a little younger

- starting tomorrow.

JB: Did you go back then to your photography after that?

OB: Oh, I never left it. I did it all the while. I didn't close my studio or anything. I didn't even have an office except the corner of a little restaurant down in Elkhart that the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Joy Harris, the late Mr . and

Mrs. Joy Harris, put me a desk and a telephone over in the

corner of their little restaurant to use f or my convenience

and have people come down and meet me for interview and what

not. And that was as near as I even had t o an office there.

I'd go back to the studio and kept my typewriter under the

drafting table on a little roll-away table and I'd pullout

the typewriter and I wrote the whole paper on Monday nights.

I'd make, you know, go to all these things, make pictures

and what not during the week and make a note here and a note

there and then go back and write the whole paper on Sunday BRIGGS 13

OB: and Monday. I wrote a column called Walk in My Moccasins, front

page column, which I won state and national and

international awards for and, my editorials, I learned that

the local people down there, some had never read an editorial. And the reason they didn't was because they

could read it three times, they said, and they didn't know

what the people meant. But I wrote simply. I wrote simply .

If I couldn't spell a word I didn't use it, you know. If it

was t oo big for me to spell it was too big for me to use. I

never would go get my dictionary and look it up to see if I

could use it. I thought if I don't know what it means and I

can't spell it, those people that read this Elkhart Eagle,

that was the name of it, the Elkhart Eagle, are not gonna

know. So I'll keep it simple, my sentences short, right to

the point, always a little dramatic and always as I felt it, and as I thought it.

And my editorials, I decided right away, that if you

can't stand up and be counted for what you believe in, you

are liable to fall for anything. And people would read my

editorials. The old men used to sit around the stove down

there in one of the stores, a wood stove, and read my editorials and discuss them. And they'd tell me themselves

that they'd never read an editorial before in their lives

but they liked the way I wro te.

JB: That's wonderful.

OB: And one of the judges that had judged for a newspaper

contest in which I had won. One year I won seven first

places, in seven different categories, and the judges would BRIGGS 14

OB: write down why they chose a certain editor for

something or a certain writer for something. And one of the writers - one of the, oh, I don't know whether it was an

editor of a paper someplace off in the east or where.

They'd always get somebody way off to judge these thi~gs.

And one of these people wrote of my writing: This writer is

a person that the educated and the uneducated, the young and

the old, t~he distinguished and the indistinguishable (I

believe is the word he used) can all read and understand and

feel and this is why I chose her work.

And I never failed to write an editorial every week.

And I wrote my Walk in My Moccasins and that reflected my

personality. The other things I stuck to facts as near as I

could. Some I embellished a little. Some of the ladies

would say of writing about the quilting club or the social

activities that went on: Was it really that good?! I don't believe it was all that great. And they'd kid me about it,

you know, because I ... It wasn't embellishing it, it was just seeing it through my eyes.

JB: In your newspaper writing, is that how you met LBJ and

the other distinguished people around here, or was that

o therwise?

OB: Well, yes, that's how I met Mr. Johnson. I hadn't

known him prior to that. Wait a minute - no, however, I was

precinct chairman of my voting box for 15 years, all during

these years. And of course this is why I had an avid

interest in politics and that helped in my newspaper, too,

to go to these things. But I had been precinct chairman BRIGGS 15

OB: for 15 years. And, I went to the political conventions. I was always a delegate. Sometimes one of the very few women delegates. There usually were not very many women delegates at that time. And , how did you know that I knew Lyndon Johnson?

JB: Drew mentioned it to me. He said that you did that and that you knew several other distinguished people around here.

OB: And when John , that's how John Connally, well, I like

to think it is, maybe I'm wrong. We were at a convention,

and , this was during a recess period, and Lyndon Johnson and

I were talking. We didn't see eye to eye on anything.

Politically or anything else. And we were down in front of

this auditorium and he was trying to tell me what - this was

the year that he was going to be favorite son when he was

still senator - Lyndon Johnson. And we had kinda slid down in our seats and had our knees resting on the seats on front

of us, kinda scooted down, and directly I saw the press

corning and a bunch of photographers and newspaper men corning

from around the side of the stage. We were right down in

front, close to the orchestra pit in this great auditorium.

I said: "Here comes the press, you better take your

glasses off." I'd noticed that when the press showed up he'd

always take his glasses off . And he wore some glasses that

had no rims, rimless , I have some like them. They don't do

anybody justice, rimless glasses don 't. And I noticed that

was the reason he took them off was because they were unbecoming. BRIGGS 16

OB: So he just snatched his glasses off real quick and he didn't have any place to put them and he just handed them to me. I took his glasses and held them while the press converged on him, asking him questions and taking his picture and what not. I stood - I did stand up and stood over to one side, and when they went away and handed him his glasses back. And as I started to hand his glasses back to him I reached down and took the - I had a dress on with a big full silk skirt. It was a little black shirtwaist with a big full skirt which was stylish then, and had petticoats under it. I took the edge of my silk dress and wiped off his lenses and I looked up at him, his 6 feet 4 inches of height, and I said:"Mr. Johnson, the next time you need t o get your lenses changed why don't you get you some horn­ rimmed frames? These glasses are not becoming to you. They make you look older. And horm-rim frames would make you look mo re intelligent."

And he took offense to this and he looked down at me, you know, standing there trying to tiptoe up close enough to him to where he could hear me, you know. I was trying not to talk loud. And he looked down on the top of my head and he said:"Why don't you get your braids cut off?" and stalked away. And I was just about two sheets mad at him and I

stalked up the aisle and went out into the lobby where they had a little, you know, foyer, s o to speak. And they had

some coffee stands and over here you could get a sandwich or

a cup of coffee and a doughtnut or whatever.

And all of a sudden I saw somebody that I knew, a great big fine-looking BRIGGS 17

OB: lawyer from Wichita Falls. And he waved at me to come there and I went over and John Connally was standing there by him. Of course, I knew him when I saw him but I had not been formally introduced to him. He was a friend of this man . And he said:"Have you met Hr. Connally?" >VeIl, I recognized him because of having seen his pictures and having used his pictures in my newspaper and said hello.

They were both drinking coffee out of paper cups and

somebody handed me a cup of coffee and I said:"Hr. Connally, why don't you get you another job and quit being Lyndon

Johnson's poodle dog?" It was an awful thing to say to

somebody you just met, you know, but I'd always felt in my

heart that was sort of what he was , you know. But he

wasn't, he was many things other than that. But, he was

always, to me , Lyndon's brains.

And, he kinda laughed, and swallowed his coffee and he said: "Hhat would you have me be? What do you want me to

do? " And he took another great big swig of coffee, and so

did the lawyer. The lawyer was amused at this, he was very

amused at this. He and John were both towering strengths.

And he said:"Hhat would you have me be? "And he took this

swig of coffee just as he asked me that. And I said:"Why ,

I'll tell you what you can do." I said:"You can run for

governor and I'll shake every bush in East Texas for you if

you will." And all of a sudden , he and this man both had

their mouths full of this coffee, and coffea squirted

everywhere. And they just died laughing while they were

mopping up coffee off their lapels, you know. They thought

that was the BRIGGS 18

OB: funniest thing they ever heard of. And Lyndon Johnson walks up about that time. He says:"What's so doggone funny?" Of course, he knew both men, which I didn't - wasn't aware of, and he didn't know that I knew them. He said:"What's so doggone funny?" So, this lawyer said:

"Osjetea is gonna run John for governor."

That was in 1956, and in 1959 I guess it was, it was before he announced, he called me long distance from someplace, John did. He said: "I seem to remember far back in my memory where you once swore to shake every bush in

East Texas for me if I'd run for governor. You get to bush shaking. I'm gonna expect that." So I said: "Okay." So I shook the bushes in East Texas for him. One of the first places where he made his announcement, he came t o Anderson

County and we had a coffee here for him in the local little hotel at the time, and he announced that he would run for governor. That was an experience, too.

I don't think Mr. Johnson ever forgave me, though, for making that remark about his glasses. But I didn't mean it,

I meant to be helpful. I wasn't being - I thought well he would look real intelligent, you know, with horn-rimmed glasses on. And there was no reason for him to go aro und without his glasses. He couldn't see his hand in front of

his face without the glasses on I f o und out l ater. But he

was a very nice man as far as I know but we just didn't

agree politically. He was a little too liberal for me. I was always exceedingly conservative. BRIGGS 19

JB: That's true with a lot of people with him. He was very liberal. as: If I had been a man they would have said of me: He was a gentleman of the old school. But I have always been a person of the old school. I think we lose an awful lot to progress.

JS: I feel we do too. We have, definite ly.

as: This is what's wrong with our world now. And people -

children have too much too soon. I wouldn't hesitate a

minute to wish on every lasting one of the little fellows to

have lived - to have had to live the same kind of life my

brothers and I lived.

JS: Le t's go hack now and pick up on some of the things

that you all did as you were growing up. Earlier we were

talking about living on the creek and your brothers

having to learn to swim.

as: It was a matter of necessity. Everything we did was a

matter of necessity. I've been old all my life. Even my

mother said that to me one time. I said:"Mama, why do y'all

wait till I get home to make the funeral arrangements when

one of us dies?" She said:"Well, because we lean on you."

She said:"You've always been old. You've always been like a

little old lady. And you could always very quietly go about

doing these things that had to be done without emotion. You

could get it done. And we leave it to your judgment." Sut I

got to thinking. Well, this is true, I really was old. But

all children-I was not any different from others. They were BRIGGS 20

OB: all old, because we were but adults of a smaller size.

In those days, the children had to worry. You didn't have to, you couldn't help but do it. You worried about the things your family worried about. You worried about all aspects of living. There was no money. That was not bad, in looking back, it wasn't even bad to us then. We just learned to endure. We raised our own vegetables, we killed our own hogs. That was the hardest part about it. You had to always be eating somebody you knew well. I'd leave home when we killed hogs because I could not, never did , I never would eat the hog meat because I knew all those hogs personally. I'd do without meat, I'd eat the vegetables.

I'd eat the biscuits and syrup and jam and the sweets and

everything, too much no doubt, but I could not eat those people that I knew so well.

JB: I bet you had everyone of them named. OB: We did.

OB: You had them all named, the chickens named, even . Even

after I got grown and went away from home to work in the

world -- I remember one time coming into breakfast. I had

slept a little late 'cause I got in at 2 o'clock in the

morning, to Groesbeck, and Mama had breakfast on the table

when I got up and I put on my shoes and my clothes real

quick and run into the kitchen to eat. You know we ate in

the kitchen and it was all the same thing, the kitchen and

the dining room was. And Mama had breakfast already on the

table and the family was all gathered around and I sat down

o n the old bench over on the other side of the table and BRIGGS 21

OB: reached over to take some bacon out o f the great long bowl that she had it in and Mama saw me , and that's the second drawback - my fork, you know. That bacon looked so good and it smelled so delicious, you know. Mama said:"Go ahead, eat it. It isn't anybody you know." She said:"I got that already sliced. Can you believe they have sliced bacon now? Already sliced. I got it at the grocery store. You can eat it. It's not anybody you know." She'd go out and kill a chicken before us kids would wake up so we wouldn't know which chicken she killed.

We learned to endure. We endured whatever hardship we had. When we needed a tablet or a pencil in school, one of us, well , we'd say:"Mama, we've got to take a dozen eggs in

in the morning." You could sell a dozen eggs for lOt. A Big

Chief table t cost a nickel. A pencil cost a nickel. A good pencil, the yellow kind, you know, Murado I believe it is.

And you could have a tablet and a pencil for lOt and we'd

sell a dozen eggs, but we wouldn't have any eggs to eat

until the hens had time to lay some more. We'd do without

food to have a tablet and a pencil and do so courageously, you know. We didn't know we were being courageous but it

was. Really, it was a kind of courage for children, yes.

JB: For children that age.

OB: To gallantly do without food so that you could have a

tablet and a pencil because that was more important. That

was education. We were learning something. That's what you went to school for. You didn't go to play. My brothers BRIGGS 22

OB: foo tball team. Even if they had wanted to have been they never asked t o be on the football team. They were great b ig husky men. They never asked to play football because they knew that Pa and Mama would not tolerate it.

You went to school to learn, you didn't go to play. I was never a cheerleader. I didn't have the guts to be a cheerleader, to be truthful. I wouldn't have got up there in front of everybody in those little short skirts that they had. They were just barely above the knees. You know, I would have been too shy. I wouldn't have got up and jumped up and down in front of people. To me that was silly. So,

I was never a cheerleader. But I got the American Legion medal. And it had courage, character, honor, scholarship and service. Indian have much honor. You may not have anything to eat but you have much honor.

JB: That's right.

OB: That was grandpa's training. Grandpa, the Choctaw,

t old his children when they were little, he said:"Now look , now this is what we need nowdays. The children have gone to pot, you know. What we need nowdays is more Indian grandfathers or fathe rs. " Grandpa told Mama and her ten

brothers and sisters:"Now look-a-here, kids, if anyone o f

you brings shame to this family or to my tribe, or to your

mother's tribe, so help me God you are my responsibility. I

will personally take you out in yonder woods and shoot you

through the heart with my arrow. And then r'll put your

body on the hide up in a tree and let the buzzards eat you." BRIGGS 23

OB: Which was what the Indians did. And I said:"Mama, would grandpa really have done that?" She said:"I don't know , but we never did put him to a test and you'd better not put me t o a test either because you don't know whether I will or won't and I expect I would."

And if anyone of us had done it, we believed he would have. And you better believe it. And we believed it. We didn't put it to a test. But this is why children need to be adults when they are little. We were just adults of a smaller size, but we suffered as our families suffered. I don't remember anyone of us children ever smiling when we were little. I don't remember us ever laughing. But that wasn't so bad. You know, we weren't happy, we had a tragic life. We were always dying, some of us. You know, Indians really are not the strongest people in the world. When you see them riding astride their horses in the movies, you know, the bare chest showing even in the winter time, you know, they look so healthy. They are bronzed with the sun, you know, they all look so str.ong. But they died of TB and the galloping - they called it the galloping consumption. My fathe r 's first wife died of it. His mother and his baby all died of it, of course before we were born. Before he had us.

My mother and her sister, just older than she, who were still at home at the time, and grandma walked a log across that creek over to where Pa and his first wife and his mother and a maiden sister lived, and his children, his three children, four children counting the baby that died, where

they lived, and they t ook care of them BRIGGS 24

OB: for more than a year. They washed and they ironed and

they sent the little kids to school clean every day, and they made meals for Pa and his wife and his mother , with the help of his sister, who in the meantime somewhere along the way, got married and moved far away and just any distance

was far away in those days.

But that's how my father met my mother. Because she

and her sister and grandma had taken care of them every day.

You didn't have nursing homes when you put - to put a

chronically ill person in. Grandma and his wife were both

sick at the same time. But now they were the same way we

had been. Mama and her brothers and sisters, they were

adults when they were children. They grew up that way. JB:

They grew up working.

OB: They grew up working. If you were old enough to walk

you were old enough to work. You could go gather the eggs

up if you were three years old. If you were big enough for that you were big enough t o t o te s t ove wood in when you were

three. And we had a wood stove. We had not only to cut the

wood but to t ote it in. We had the hogs under the house.

That was our hog pen right under the kitchen floor. Oh,

that was the modern day garbage disposal in those days.

My oldest brother got tired of seeing mama, when he'd

be gone somewhere or off in the field working, mama would

tote the slop out to the hogs. She was a big old raw-boned

girl, you know, she could have carried the five gallons of

slop without any trouble but he thought that was unladylike for her to have to do that. She was only seven years , no ten BRIGGS 25

OB: years older than he was and - but he thought it was unladylike for mama to have to tote the slop out when he and Pa were gone. So he wanted to fix it so she wouldn't have to tote the slop out, so he put a chicken wire around on those big blocks. You saw how that old house was built. It had tall blocks. They are really taller than they looked in the picture, 'cause you could see the barn from in front of the house if you weren't too tall. You could see the barn. And, he put chicken wire around the blocks the house set on, the sills, you know, and put the hogs under the house. And he drilled a hole in the kitchen floor and put a funnel in it. And we could just pour the slop right through down to the

JB: That's a modern disposal.

OB: Yes, right through down to the slop trough. Didn't have to tote it out. Now that was really convenient. JB: It really was. He was brilliant for thinking of it.

OB: But, one time they had the school nurse come. Back in those days just before school started each year the school nurse, the county - what she was was the county health officer. She'd come around to everybody's house in the country to kind of inspect the children. You know, then children never saw a doctor until they went to their death bed, usually when they were eighty years old. They didn't see doctors. But she'd come around and she'd look down your throat and see if you see the great big "E" on the wall, or if you could hear thunder, well, then you were healthy. BRIGGS 26

OB: And she came to our house, the last house of that day, it was the last house at the end of the road , of course.

And this older brother, which was a hal f - brother really but mama didn ' t allow us to say half brothers and sisters. And nobody ever knew the difference but what they were her

children during her lifetime. She would turn over in her

grave if she heard me saying it now. But anyway , the oldest

brother, he was there. And he thought this little nurse was

about the cutest thing that he ever saw and he was trying to

make eyes at her but, you know, he was a little too country

t o know what he was doing. But, anyway, he was sitting over

there kinda grinning at her and watching her check us all

out and look down our throats and he was leaning back in this old straight chair against the wall. And all of a

sudden , it was about 5 o'clock. See the hogs got hungry.

And they began to make this - of course , you don't know

about this , you are not a country girl, I can tell.

JB : Oh, yes I am.

OB: You got a lot of polish. You never heard the hogs make

this noise under the house that they do when they are hungry. Well, these hogs set up this loud noise, you know,

kind o f a halfway growl and a whine. She jumped real quick

and she said:"What was that?" Brother said:"Oh, it was just

the hogs ma'am." She said: "The hogs. Why it sounded like

it was right under this very house." He said:"It was. We

have the hogs under the house." And mama did this way, put

her hands over her face, and looked at him through her BRIGGS 27

OB: fingers. Oh, she was so ashamed of him f o r saying that. She was trying to put on her best ladylike manners, and goodness knows she didn't have very many. She was trying to use them in f r ont of the little city-bred nurse.

She said: "Under this house? Why that's not sanitary." He said:"Honey, where did you every see a sanitary hog?" She said:"Oh, I mean it isn't healthy." He said:"We ain't never lost a hog yet." And marna, oh, she just:"Oh, no l" She moved her hands from over her eyes and she said:"Now you know better than that. I never did - I tried to be a good mother to you. I am going to disown you this very day." He just laughed at her, you know. He said:"Now, Doshie, you know you wouldn't disown me." He said:"If it hadn't been for you toting that 5-gallon can of slop, those hogs wouldn't be under the house." But anyway, it was one of the good memories. It was one of the times we laughed. One of the times we laughed in our growing up.

JB: Do you remember what the poor nurse did? The school nurse?

OB: She was shocked. She went back to town and she told

the local doctor. She said: nOh, I tell you, I've had a lot

of experiences in this countr y." She was from St. Louis,

she'd lived in the big city all of her life. "I have had a

lot of experiences in this county, but this day does beat all. " And this doctor said: "Hhich road did you go down today?" She said:"I went all the way to the end of the long

bridge road." He said: "Oh, now I know why you had such a BRIGGS 28

OB: hectic day. You went to the Br iggs' house, didn't you.

She said:"Yeah." He said:"And they had the hogs under the house." She said:"They had the hogs under the house." And she told of that experience. In fact she told everybody in town, and everybody laughed about it. And mama was humiliated. She told, she'd say:"Oh, I was humiliated." And she told Pa on him. That was the second time she'd ever told Pa on him in her whole life. She told him once before, but she would never. She would keep secrets you know. She wouldn't tell on one of her s tepchildren. But she told Pa on him and Pa just laughed. He thought it was funny, he would have done the same thing if he had been at the house.

JB: Yeah, he probably would have. OB: Oh, she said: I was humiliated.

END OF SIDE 1, 45 MINUTES. BRIGGS 29

SIDE 2: OB: We learned to be crack shots because when we'd go to the woodpile. You know, living on the bank of the river, so close to this Navasota River, the snakes - we could always tell when there was going to be an overflow, the snakes would come out from the river. And they'd come up and hide in the woodpile. And when you'd go out to pick up an armload of

stovewood, well, you had t o be prepared to shoot snakes, because there'd always be water moccasins and they are very poisonous. There'd be snakes in the woodpile. We would know

there was gonna c ome an overflow because of the snakes in the

woodpile. And we had to always be prepared for the snakes.

That was just o ne of the hazards of living in the country.

And, this long road t o school. But do you know we went;

we went. We went every day. We didn't have any puny excuses

of: We didn't feel good. Because however bad we felt, we knew we'd feel better when we got to school because we'd be warm. JB: You'd be warm during the winter.

OB: We'd be warm and it would be better f or us to go to

school, no matter how sick we were. And if we could stand up

we went. And we'd feel better by evening. And we could

endure the cold winter nights when we came home after we'd

been to school. And true, we studied our lessons by coal oil

lamp, and we all had sort of ultimately bad eyesight but

perhaps not that had nothing to do with it. I wouldn't even

- it was something we did in our later life. We don't think

it was from the coal oil lamps. It could have been - BRIGGS 30

OB: I don't mean that we were nearly blind or anything, but my brothers and I all wore glases by the time they got back from the war.

JB: My family all doe~ too.

OB: So, I don't think it was from studying our lessons by the coal oil lamp. I don't think that had anything to do with it. My mother's people - a lot of them wore glasses.

My father wore glasses. The first time I can remember him he had on glasses. In fact my father was an old man when I first remember him. He was born in 1877. Can you imagine my father being born in 1877? And his father was born in

1800 on Washington's birthday. And they made guns. His father's people did, for the revolution. I can't find for sure whether they came on the Mayflower. I'm sure they probably didn't. I think it was the ship called the

"For tune" but they made guns for the revolution and my

father's father's name was Eli Nelson Briggs.

And the Eli was from Eli Whitney of cotton gin fame.

Eli Whitney had been a gun maker before he invented the

cotton gin. And, they worked in the same gun factory. My

ancient cousins told me after Pa died and that the Nelson

was from Lord Nelson - that grandpa's father knew Lord

Nelson. Where, I haven't been able to get the connection.

I got so desperate after my father's death to find my

grandfather's grave that I went to Mississippi and found his

grave and I went to the capitol and looked at the microfilm

of 1880. He had died in 1879 on April 6, when my father was two years and two days old BRIGGS 31

OB: And, a few years l ater Pa and his mother and other younger children came to Texas. But I had always - I had never known much about grandpa until after I went there and

I found a Briggs that had quite a Civil War record. And I learned that that was my father's oldest half brother. That his father had been married three times. Grandma was his third wife and he had two sets of children. This Uncle Jim

that they told me about, James Howard Briggs was the one whose war record I had found before I knew who he was. And

I came back and looked in an old trunk of my father's and I found a box of letters and things that my father had saved

and one of them was a letter from my grandmother ' s brother

that had written to her after she came to Texas in 1880

something, and he talked about he hadn't heard from some of

the other brothers and sisters and that - he said:"Now that

we are scattered to the four winds, we'll probably never see each other again." And signed it,I believe it was William J.

Briggs. Not Briggs - Carr, because her name was Carr before she married.

And, Pa had told me that grandma had eight brothers who

fought in the Civil War, seven of them for the Confederacy

and Uncle Marshall f o ught for the Yankees because he said:

"Hell, if the Confederacy was gonna have his seven brothers,

well those damn Yankees would need somebody to fight for

them so he would go and fight with the Yankees." And all

eight of them were at Vicksburg when they surrendered on

July 4, 1865, 4 I believe it was ,' 64, because they

surrendered about a year before the war was over . All BRIGGS 32

OB: eight of them were there and they had lived through it. JB: Oh, how wonderful.

OB: Whether they lived through the entire war I never did know. Pa said he thought they all lived from what he had remembered grandma saying. That all of them had lived. But anyway, in checking out the Briggs family, and finding out that grandpa's people had worked in this - whether it was his father or his grandfather that had worked in this gun factory. It must have been his father for naming his son Eli for Eli whitney, and I thought: Well, I'll just call somebody. Sometimes you can get information, you know, and get all sorts of information from Information, so I thought:

Well, where will I call, though, where will I - which town in

Massachusetts will I call.

And Mr. Mac had a book on guns and I got this book on guns down and I started turning to see where it was published or something and right inside in the flyleaf here it said:

Published by such and such a publisher at Plymouth,

Massachusetts. And down below they had giving credit to Miss

Rose Briggs for the use of her family antique guns and everything that she had allowed them to use to make pictures of in this gun book. My God, here, he had had that book for years and I gave it to him. I bought it for him because I knew he liked guns. And I didn't even-had never looked in it.

So I said: Plymouth, that's where I'll call. I'll call

Plymouth. So I got information in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and told her I'd like to have the number for Miss Rose Briggs. And she BRIGGS 33

OB: thought for a minute. She said,"Are you a relative?"

And I said:"I don't know whether I am or not. I don't even know the lady." She said:"Well, I didn't want to tell you she was dead if you were a relative." She said:"She died three years ago. But there are a lot of other B~iggses, would you like for me to call another o ne?" I said,"Well, I don't know any of their names ." I said:"It said in this book that I saw

Miss Rose Briggse's name in it said of Pilgrim Hall." I said:

"What is Pilgrim Hall?" She said:"That is the big museum

built on Plymouth Rock." She said:"Well, actually, it's not

right on the rock , it's r ight beside the rock." She says:

"Would you like for me to give you the number of Pilgrim Hall?" She said:"You might be able to get the information you

are looking for at Pilgrim Hall." I said: "Yeah, give me

Pilgrim Hall." So someone answered the phone at Pilgrim Hall,

which was this big, big museum and I told the lady my name

and I no sooner told her my name was Osjetea Briggs she says

is that your borned name or is that a married name? I said

its my borned name. And I told her that I had tried to call Miss Rose Briggs and that the information had told me the

woods were full of Briggs up there. She said:"We have three

of them on our board of directors." I said:"Well, I don't

know any of them to ask to talk to and I'll just try to write

one of them a letter." And she said:"Where are you calling

from? Do you mind telling me?" I said:"I'm calling from

Texas." She said:"Texas! Have you ever been up here?" I

said:"No." She said:"Well, why don't you come up here and BRIGGS 34

OB: meet some of your relatives. These people are bound to be your relatives. I said:"Well, that's a fer piece. " And she said: "IVell , how do you spell that?" I said:"Spell what?

Texas? " She said:"No, fer piece. " I said:"F-e-r p-i-e-c-e."

I said:"You know, you don't spell this kind of fer like f-u-r,"I said:"This is f-e-r. This is a fer piece. " And she hollered out to somebody across the museum:"you know what.

I'm talking to somebody by the name of Briggs in Texas and that is a fer piece off ."

JB: Well, when you became such excellent shots, did your brothers hunt in the woods or ••. ?

OB: Oh, yeah. They were - they got sharpshooters medals in the army. And, they knew just how far they could kill a rabbit over so many cotton rows you know. That's the way they measured it. They didn't tell you how many feet. I got this rabbit over so many cotton rows, you know. And we ate rabbits and squirrels. They'd skin them before they brought them to the house, though, because they knew I wouldn't eat it if I saw it alive. Now, Pa and Mama didn't feel that way and my other brothers and sisters didn't. My brothers that went to the war didn't. My oldest brother was sick. He died just before the war so he didn't. He was too old to go anyway. He also died of consumption - TB. It evidently kinda run in his mother's family.

JB: It must have run in that family.

OB: And it was just before they discovered the cure for TB.

If he had lived another year they would have been - they BRIGGS 35

OB: probably could have cured him. But anyway, his son was a Marine and he went and he fought all the way through the

Pacific and he lived over it with just a wound. And he was really a mighty Marine. He's still living. And one of my brothers, the one that's next to me , the one whose pool we sat around , the one that said why the young men in Vietnam could never make it. They could never make it. And you know they make a big fuss about the missing in action men of

Vietnam, you know. Well, there have been men missing in action from every war and nobody ever made a big deal out of it. Or they just - when they let them - sent them the telegram missing in action, well that was it. And that's all - Buster Hanner's missing in action t oo . He is in a casket called "Arizona" out at Pearl Harbor. And there's

1100 other men down there with him. They are all missing in action. And nobody's asked them to dig them up or bring

their bones back.

JB: When they do, how can you be sure that it's --

OB: How can you be sure , yeah, how can you be sure? When

you ' ve got somebody missing in action do just like this member of my family's got a name down on - I say a member of

my family, just by ma rriage, got his name on this thing down

in fro nt of the courthouse on the marker. That's been from

Anderson County . That's one of the reasons why I came to

Anderson County. I thought well that was such a great young

man and he was from Natchez. And Anderson County must be a

wonderful county to have known a young man like that and BRIGGS 36

OB: like my brothers were from Limestone County. But they were all pretty much the same. And they didn't have any progress in Palestine, you know. But no sooner than I came here did they set up an industrial foundation and started begging strangers to come in here. And with every stranger that came they had to push down a pine tree. I wouldn't give a pine tree f or the whole lot of them. Progress, you know. It changes people. Suddenly you have to lock your doors. You have t o lock your car. You can't leave your equipment in your car any more without locking it.

JB: And lot o f times even when you lock it, it's still gone.

OB: It changes people. And suddenly when there's so much

progress everybody has too much of everything. They don't

know how to do without. They don't know how to adjust to not having anything.

JB: They want it all yesterday.

OB: And, you know, really, gold is only good for filling

teeth and tempting fools when you get right down to it. Vlhen

we didn't have any money during the depression we knew what

to do about it. Do you know, when welfare first came to

Limestone County, it the came in the form of a great long

truck with a closed in bed at the back. And they had flour

and they had beans, they had salt and sugar, basics. Do you

know that people, not even the blacks, would go and get it.

People that were hungry wouldn't go and get it. They didn't

want something for nothing. And they weren't Indians, either BRIGGS 37

OB: Indians are basically like that. They are always like that. They don't want something for nothing. But these

people, black and white; there was a family that lived near

us. The lady's husband had lost his mind. And she had seven

children. And they needed it. And my mother offered to go

and get it for her because she knew the lady had much polish.

She had come from a fine family and she didn't want to go ask for "relief" they called it. It wasn't welfare it was

relief. And she said:"No. We will starve first." My mother

said:"No you won't. We'll all share what we don't have. If

we've got a chicken we'll give you half of it. A little more

than half because there's more of y'all than there are of

us . " They just had the three children of us at home. And there was a colored lady that lived over to the

south of us. South from that old house yonder. And she and her children worked in the fields. And, when they needed something, we knew it. She didn't have to come and ask for

anything. We'd take it over t o her. And the man and his

family that lived up between us and town, the next house,

they were black. We lived close to blacks all of our lives.

We never sat down at the table and ate with them, because

they wouldn't have sat down at the table if we'd asked them.

They were old- fashioned black people. They were people of

honor. We had one negro neighbor and his wife and thr ee

children, just about the ages of me and my brothers, just

stair steps. They were the best people that I almost ever

knew, you know.

And when my mother's mother had had a BRIGGS 38

OB: stroke down in College Station , she had gone down after my grandfather's death and was staying with my aunt for a while, my mother's oldest sister, and we needed to go down there often. She wasn't able to move her back. She didn't want to come back with grandpa no longer around. He'd been dead two years. We would drive t o College Station and back and Pa couldn't always go and this man would go with mama and me on the weekend. He would go in the car with us to fix flats.

We'd go down there one day and come back the next and my aunt made him a place to sleep on the back porch so that he could sleep under the roof. And he'd ride in the back seat and mama and me in the front seat and he'd be just t o fix flats. And back then you couldn't go anywhere without having a flat tire . And we were not at all afraid. We didn't have to be afraid of this man. We didn't have to be afraid of him. We called him Old Elmer. He was our friend. He went to take care of us, you know, if we had a flat tire. JB: Or anything e lse that •••

OB: And if anybody had come along and bo thered us he would have laid down his life for us, 'cause we were his white folks. And they had honor , and character, and courage. And he wouldn't have asked for anything from relief. He would have been just like the white lady that we knew. He'd have starved first. He would have worked for it, if he could chop some wood, Or work a day. And if we didn't have any money to pay him, we'd pay him with a chicken , but that's the way BRIGGS 39

OB: people were there. JB: You helped each other. OB: You helped each other to endure. Yo u grieved for each o ther, and you had each other and that made up for all the things you didn't have. Material things that you could do without. And in the long range scheme of things you can do without an awful lot if you have to. And it just makes you stronger.

JB: Makes you stronger.

OB: It makes you stronger. JB: You were talking about the car. Was it a Model A or a 't? Model T, or what kind of car was 1 •

OB: It was a 1929 Chrysler, four door. Big old car. But

this was in 1931, and it was pretty well - we bought it

secondhand. It was pretty well shot by the time we got it but it was a good old car. I mean, they made them .. JB: They made them good cars.

OB: They made them the same way they made people. They made

them to endure. It was kinda low on the ground. Mama and I

went off a big bluff over in the river bottom in it one day.

The steering gear broke. Well, it just - what happened you'd

drive a car in the mud so much, you know, you'd get all this

dirt in these little ball joints that hang down. Your

husband would know - the steering gear across the front is

solid and has these little ball joints that hold the steering gear. Hold the wheels up. We were going over to grandma and grandpa's house and we were in a hurry. It BRIGGS 40

OB: was grandma's birthday. It was August 8th. And they had thrown up a new dump through the river bottom, real high. iVell it was high to me then, it might not be such a high

bluff now. But it was a good 15 footer, you know, just dirt,

just a dirt road. And you went off this long bridge, what you call - I can show you a picture of the l ong bridge, we'll

have to do that before you go - the long bridge, and the road

turned a little bit to the right, and then you had to cross

over a bridge of a slough and this bridge had no banisters,

no banisters at all . It just had runners on the wooden

b r idge. And as we approached, as we made this little turn to

go up on the bridge, just before we got to it, maybe 15 feet

back, the steering gear dropped down and the car was still

turned the way Mama had tried t o turn it.

And it scared her to death, you know, although she

didn't scare easily. She realized immediately what had

happened. She had always done the driving, Pa didn't even

drive. She'd always done the driving, and we didn't have a

sign of a brake , because Mama said:"Now, if we get in a

tight, you pull up the emergency brake." This old car -

Chrysler - had a brake with a, you know, lever. And I saw

the fear on Mama's face. She felt that fall down, don't you

know. I didn't know what had happened but I saw the fear and

I saw her trying to turn the wheel and the whee l going around

and she couldn't turn the wheel, don't you know, and we were

going off this bluff at an angle. And she was so scared,

it's the first time I ever saw and the only time I ever saw BRIGGS 41

OB: Mama when she didn't have control.

She just stomped the floorboard with both feet, you know. Of course she didn't have a brake. It had a clutch and a brake then. And - but when she clomped the accelerator that old car just "whoom" just like it was brand new, you know. And that car roared off of that embankment, no t a wheel touched, it seemed like an eternity to me and her both, we said later. It seemed like an eternity we roared through the air, not a wheel touching anywhere, if a wheel had t o uched we'd have turned over and over . But we didn't, going that fast. Not a wheel touched and we just flew o ff this embankment. And that o ld car set down, right down in the bottom of that newly dug ditch. It was pretty wide across to

where there was a telephone post made of metal and a wire

fence - barbed wire fence. And when we hit down on the

bottom, that o ld car just sat there and bounced a couple of

times like that and then it started rolling real fast right

towards that telephone pole and I just reached down and I

pulled up this emergency brake with all my might, you know.

I was so scared by then I didn't know I could pull, but I

did. And we just rolled to a stop right against the

telephone post, but it was enough that it made a little dent

in the bumper. That was all the damage we did see. Just

made a little dent in the bumper.

Mama opened her door on her side , she was calm by then,

we were on the ground, you know. \Ve'd flovlD through the air

but we were on the ground. She was calm. She got out. She

was a big lady, weighed 185 p o unds, about 5 feet BRIGGS 42

OB: 10 inches tall. I got out on my side. She stooped down.

See, she hadn't said a wo~d. She stooped down and looked under the car and I was looking, I was eyeballing her. I was looking under on this side, and she said one of the ve~y few ugly words I eve~ heard her say. But she called it what it was, you know. She said:"It broke." And of course, I " knew enough to know that that was what it was. It was the

stee~ing gear.

I said:"Mama, what are we gonna do?" And hadn't a car

come by or anything, you know. Heat - hot - August the 8th.

I said: "What are we gonna do?" And she said : "We're gonna

fix it." She said:"Let me see if I can find a piece of baling wire." That was always what she used when she was in a tight, a piece of baling wire would fix pretty near anything. If

the ~ocker b~oke on the chair, well, she tie it up with a

piece of baling wire. A rusty piece of baling wire, it was

always a ~usty piece. She walked down the fence a ways and,

sure enough, there was a piece of baling wire, just tied

there fo~ her convenience on this old ba~bed wire fence. And

it was ~usty.

I said: "That makes sense. You always look for a ~usty

piece of baling wire and you want to tie up that thing with a piece of rusty baling wire." She said:"H--- no, I'm not gonna

tie it up. You're gonna tie it up. You know I can't crawl

under that car, it's too low on the ground." I said:"Mama, I

can't tie that up." I said:"Why, I'm only 11 years old." She

said:"I don't care if you're only 3, take this piece of wire

and crawl under the~e and tie that thing up." And I said - nDTGGS 43

OB: I scooted, I lay down on my back, and I scooted up under this, with my little dress o n, you know, my little ruffledy dress on, made o ut of flour sack, printed flour sack,' cause feed sacks were printed and flour sacks were printed in those days and all the clothes I had was made o ut of flour sacks or feed sacks.

I scooted up under there on my back, and I looked around. I said:"What am I gonna tie it up to?" She thought

for a minute and she says:"Anything that you see that you can

tie it up to. Tie it up." "Yes ma'am." So I saw a little

hole in the piece of metal there, and I run the wire through

that little hole and through the ends of this ball joint

thing, 'cause it had a couple of holes in it where it had

held, evidently a screw had been across there or something to

hold it. And I tied it through there and, Lord, I hadn't the

slightest idea whether it would hold or not, you know. And

she said:"Now, tie it good, just tie it as - you know, look

around, as many times as you can, that that piece of wire

will go through there, just tie it up good." She said:"What

are you tying it to, anyway." I said: "I don't know. You

said tie it to anything you can. And I'm just tying it up." "Okay," she said. She took my word for it.

And about that time a pickup truck corne along with some

men in it that had a load of cotton o n it. You know, picked

cotton. And they had seen us down there and they stopped

real quick and here they came running down just as fast as

they could to see if we were hurt. Mama said:"Oh, no, we're

not hurt." He said:"How did you get down here anyway?" And BRIGGS 44

OB: one of these men was an old flame of my mother's that she had gone dancing with before she married my father. She remembered him. nOh, hello, Charlie, how are you?" And,"oh,

I'm so glad to see you,"he said. And he said:"How did you all get down anyway?" She said:"We drove down here, we just ran off the road." "The steering gear broke," she said. He said:

"Well, how in the world are you ever gonna get it out of here?" She said:"Oh, we're gonna drive it out. We drove it down here." She says:"We're gonna drive it out." She said:

"Hurry up and get out from under there." And I scooted out from under there and she said:"Did you tie it up good?" These men all looked at each other. I saw the look that they gave each other. And I said:"I did the best I could, Mama." And she said:"Well, now we'll drive it out." And she thought for

a second and said:"I'll tell you what." She said:"You get in

there, because I'm the biggest. And since we don't have any brakes, when you run it up on that hill, up on that road, we're gonna have to catch it. Otherwise you'll go over. You'll be going so fast you might go over on the other side.

And I can help these gentlemen catch it. Three of them and

one of me, two of us on each side, we can catch it." I said:

"Mama, what if it doesn't work? I'm liable to totter back

down this way, end over end." She said:"Oh, it's gonna work

all right. You tied it up good, you said." These men said,

this one that had been mama's old beau, he said:"Dosha," her

name was Dosha. He said:"Dosha, don't you make that kid do

that." He said:"She can't do that BRIGGS 45

OB: with that tied up with a piece of baling wire." Mama said:"You don't know what you can do until you try." I never will forget that. You don't know what you can do until you try, she told the gentlemen. She said:"Get in there." She opened the car door for me. She says:"Get in there." I got in and she said:"Now, back up against that telephone post that we bent and just gun it." She says:"Just gun it and go right on up that embankment. And when you get up there we'll catch you before you go o ff on the other side." She said:"You try t o turn the wheels as fast as you can. But, if you don't quite make it, we'll catch it. And then, give you a chance to back up and straighten out." Okay.

And I roared up there. And I tell you I couldn't even see over the steering wheel, I was having to look between, you know. I could drive a little but I had to sit on a pillow, you know . And I roared up there but I didn't quite make the back wheels up, see, I didn't quite give it enough gas, and it rolled back down and hit that telephone post and

bent the bumper in the back. But not but just a little bit.

And I roared up there again, you know, gave it a little more

gas this time, and do you know the front wheels, the right

front wheel went over this embankment just a little and mama and those men caught that car and held it while I put it in

reverse and backed up and straightened it out on that narrow

-it wasn't very wide. It was wide enough for two cars to

pass, but barely. And it was straight down, no shoulder, no

nothing. And straightened that car out and I tell you right BRIGGS 46

OB: now Mama come around and got in on the other s ide. She didn't get under the steering wheel. I said:"Mama, aren't you gonna drive?" She said:"you did so well doing that." And the men had got in their truck to go on , you know , but they weren't gonna go until after we got ahead of them. They were gonna let us drive in front of them. She said:"you did so well and I was so proud of you." She said:"I think it's time you drove across the long bridge by yourself ." And this was an accomplishment. Young kids , when they were learning to drive , if they could drive across that long bridge, they had

it made. They were professionals. You didn't have to have a drivers' license then. You just had to drive across long

bridge. And that's the first time I ever drove across l ong

bridge. But Mama let me drive all the way to town to the

garage. But across long bridge. And I never did forget. I

wrote about that o nce. You don't know what you can do until you t ry. That was something. It was amazing that it even worked.

JB: It is.

OB: The mechanic , when we took it to the mechanic, he said,

after he jacked it up and saw we had it tied up with that

piece of rusty baling wire , he said:"I don't k now how it

held. I don't know how it held, that old car is so heavy,

you know, and turning the wheels against it.1I And it turned pretty good. It turned pretty good. And Mama trusted us to

drive across that long bridge with that steering gear held up

with that piece of rusty baling wire. But she had the BRIGGS 47

OB: faith. We had got up out of that ditch and driving across that bridge we had it made, you know. But once you got on the bridge, you didn't have to turn, it was straight, you know. You turned when you got off of it, t o go up a hill.

JB: You were talking about your clothes that were made from the feed sacks, and gunny sacks. Did the boys get their clothes made the same way?

OB: Mama made their shirts, and she made their underwear, and Pa's underwear and his shirts. But they bought their pants at the store, you know, and they'd last a long long time, you know. Men 's - they didn't wear blue jeans in those days, they wore khakis. And young boys wore overalls, sometimes, made out of blue jean material. But they didn't wear blue jeans as we know them today.

JB: I don't think they were even in style, or being made then.

OB: I have a dress upstairs that I wore to my junior-senior banquet made out of a white feed sack with red print. A long dress, an evening dress. And a l ong time later, we went down to Groesbeck to make pictures of the junior-senior banquet and I wore that same dress. And I had fine clothes then, you know. I didn't have to wear that but I wore it proudly. It still fit me, you know.

JB: That's amazing. 'Cause most girls couldn't do that.

OB: And I kept it. I kept it. Mama had made a little, she got a half yard o f red organdy and trimmed it. It was made

cut low here, you know, and a red ruffle around the top and BRIGGS 48

OB: just little straps across the shoulders and she put little pockets on the skirt with some red ruffles on the t op of the pockets. It had a big full gathered skirt and fit right through the middle, you know. There were no zippers on those days, and you made your, when you needed a zipper you put - let your dress button up the sides. Put buttons on it so it would fit, you know. Made it exactly to fit you. Your gathers, or whatever, but you put your buttons down the side.

It's a lot better than a zipper, really, cause you got to pull it over your head, you know, and this way you can just step in it and pull it up. Step in it and pull it up. And, every now and then Marna would make something for me until she got sick and she'd always make it that way, even after

zippers were a dime a dozen, you know, because I wanted it

that way.

JB: She still made it with the buttons?

OB: With the buttons and buttonholes. Get little buttons,

you know, the same color o f the dress, and people always

remarked about it: Why do you have buttons? Why didn't you put a zipper in it? Didn't want a zipper.

JB: Well, you know, a lot of times those zippers stick out.

I know I've got some that zip up the front and when you sit

down the zipper doesn't lay flat. It will just poke out.

OB: See. But this does not.

JB: And with that it wouldn't. Mother, she's made us,

mother made my clothes and she made me several that - she'd

put the zipper down the side and now those will stay but if BRIGGS 49

~B: it's down the back or in the front the back it sticks you all the time and the front it pops up. So I can see those buttons would be a good idea. OB: I had a black silk dress, I love black. I love black.

JB: You look good in it, too.

OB: And I had this black silk shirtwaist dress, the one

that I wore to where I met Mr. - and Mama made it and it was made just like a shirt in front, you know, and fit, and it

had a placket that went below the waistline, so that the

waist would fit, you know. But it was hidden from the waist

down, see, it just buttoned over underneath the placket.

But was buttoned all the way and I could just step in it. It

was the best thing in the world to put on. It had long

sleeves with tight-fitting little cuffs. I loved that

dress. I hated to see it wear out.

I keep things. I can't part with something that I have

liked, whether it is a piece of clothing, or a pair of

shoes, a pair of moccasins, a pair of old scout boots. I

have a pair of knee-high scout boots that I wore to all

those press association meetings that I went to speak, that

I wore. I wore my Indian dress and my scout boots because

Mr. Dwelley at the Athens Review, who was the president o f

the Texas Press Association when they first asked me. I

wouldn't go, I wouldn't go. I said:"I can't do that." He said:"What do you mean you can't do that?" He said: "I've already told people, being president of the Texas Press

Association, that I would get you here. They want to hear

what you have to say. And all you have t o do BRIGGS 50

OB: is to speak on how you did that El khart Eagle. Why can't you do it? You've got to explain to me why you can ' t do it. Now I printed your paper." He said: " I'll pull that on you. I printed your paper when I didn ' t really think you could do it. And I think that you ought to COme down here and honor me with your presence at this press meeting because I've already told people I could get you to do it. "

Well, I had to do it then, you know . Well , I don't know, I said: "Mr. Dwilley, they can't even get shoes on me here in

this county. How can I come down there in front of all

those fine people? " nOh, so that's your problem , "he said.

" Your shoes." He said: "Do you think I want you to come down here in 4-inch high heels and a mink coat, with your hair done up on top of your head? That would embarrass me. I don't want a floozy. I want you to come down here just like

you are. In your moccasins if you want to. Whatever you wear on your feet." He never had seen me but the one time

that I'd gone in to ask him to print my paper. He said

whatever you wear on your feet. I said:"Well, I'll wear

moccasins and scout boots, which come up to the knee. " And

he said:"If you have an Indian dress that you want to wear,

why don't you wear that red one that you had on that day that I saw you." I said: "That wasn't really an Indian

dress. " I said: " I have some with fringe on it. " He said:

"Wear the one with fringe on it. Whatever the color." This

was just - it had some Indian braid on it, you know. High

neck. Long sleeves. It didn ' t have any fringe on it but it had Indian braid on it. BRIGGS 51

OB: And a little bit up the side. It was slit up each side

just a little bit. But a little Indian braid up the side and around the hem. It was one I made myself. But I had one with fringe on it. A black one with fringe on it and my

scout boots were black. Lo ng fringe, had fringe that long on

the scout boots. I said:"Well, alright. I'll do it if I

can." I said:"But if you're embarrassed now, don't blame me

for it." So I went. But he told me, he said:"I'll tell you

what you do if you are afraid you will forget who you are

when you stand up in front of the people. write your speech

d own. Write what you want to say. Double space it like you

do your copy on your newspaper, double space it, and when you

stand up to this great big lectern, when you stand up there,

he said, you can put your papers. Believe me, I know, he

says. You put your notes on it and you can just slide page

after page o ver and the audience will never know it. And

when you put your old thick glasses on they can't see your

eyes and where you are looking anyway. And they won't know

you're reading it. If you get in a real pinch you can read

it." Well that gave me confidence so I tried it.

JB: I bet you didn't have to read it, though.

OB: No, I didn't. All I needed to do was just to see when I

was at the end of a page so I could slide it over in case I

got cold feet somewhere on the way and had to look at it.

After you write something down you can remember it. If it's

your own work, you know. You can. But, I couldn't think BRIGGS 52

OB: how I wanted to start it and I left the front page, the first page, the beginning unfinished. I had to give that a little more thought. But I thought well I can write that out

in longhand. He had told me he wanted me to talk about 40 minutes. You can say a lot in 40 minutes. You can read the

constitution in 40 minutes, or less time.

And on my way to Austin that afternoon, I thought I'd go

right after noon so I wouldn't have to drive the next

morning. I was supposed to talk at 10 o'clock in this big

room and I'd go on that afternoon and stay the night so I'd

get a good night's sleep and that might help a little bit.

But on the way down there I started through Jewett and of

course I was flying low. The speed limit was 70 miles an

hour and I always drove about 4 miles faster than the speed

limit. Not 5, that's too many, but 4 miles past the speed

limit and I was just flying low through this little town and an old man and old lady drove right out in front of me. They

didn't look one way or the other. They never knew I was

there. And I had to swerve to keep from hitting them and I

completely had to cross the road. I knew better than to hit

my brake too hard. Across the road and out on the other side

where it was real bumpy and I killed the engine and I had a

brand new '60, I guess. No it wasn't, it was a '63 Buick I

had. Green Buick. And I just sat there.

I put my head down on the steering wheel and I thought,

Oh, my God, I'm not even going to get there alive if somebody

else runs out in front of me like that. I just had my head BRIGGS 53

OB: down on the steering wheel. And before I started the motor again I knew I hadn't hurt the car. It was a real heavy car. Good car. And all of a sudden I heard this voice. I'm not really crazy. I hear voices. Old people, the angels speak to me. And this voice said, and I

recognized it. It said: "The Lord and His angels look after

some people and you're one of them." And I raised up, that

was all it said. I raised up and I looked in the back seat

to see if anybody was back there. Of course, I knew it

wasn't. The voice I heard was dead. But I had to - without

thinking, I looked around to the back seat to see if it was

there. And I thought that's the way I'll start my talk. I'll

just stand up and hold my chin up and I'll say: The Lord and His angels look after some people and I'm one of them;

otherwise, I could never have done the Elkhart Eagle. And go

on from there.

And that was the way I started my talk. I got down t he

road a ways I stopped for a cup of coffee and took my scratch

pad that I had and I wrote it down on it and then I wrote a

little more stuff right there. Made one paragraph , that was

all I added to my speech, just one paragraph. And then I

ended it the same way, like I had Washington's speech.

JB: The first essay that you wrote. Osjetea, tell us about

when you were born, the dates, and all, so we'll have that on

our records.

OB: December 14, 1919.

JB: 1919. Were you born at home, probably? BRIGGS 54

OB: Uh huh. NO hospital.

JB: Was the doctor there?

OB: Yes, the doctor was there. But that was all. And I've always been exceedingly healthy.

JB: That's good. Do you know any old remedies or anything

that your mother used when any of you children were ill?

OB: Oh, yes. Maybe that's why I'm so healthy. We had one

basic medicine which was apple cider vinegar. Grandpa, her

father, had made his own because he grew his own apples. And

he could grow apples in that old soil over by Old Bethel

Church when no one could grow apples any place in this

country, but somehow he could. He made his ow n. It was

pretty potent stuff but it was much like the apple cider

vinegar of today. You know, it's about 5% acetic acid.

Grandpa's was probably 10%. But, this was the basic remedy,

and also they would boil youpon leaves. They would use snuff for ant bites. And they would use ••

JB: Wet the snuff and put it on the bite?

OB: It's not the snuff that does it. It's the spit. I f the

ant bites you you spit on it. You know, that's why a dog

when the dog licks a wound it heals it. But for snake bite,

if you ever get snake bitten, just pour all the apple cider

vinegar, you know the amber kind, pour it in a bucket or a

pan, washpan, whatever you've got, or a receptacle, put your

foot in it, if it happens to be on your foot or your hand, if

you get cut, any sort of a wound , apple cider vinegar

straight out of the bottle, just put it in it. BRIGGS 55

OB: Kerosene oil will do the same thing, but it stinks, you know. Kerosene oil, really, it's an antiseptic. But apple cider vinegar you can swallow if you have t o. It is wonderful for sore throat. You can cure a strep throat actually with apple cider vinegar. You want to dilute if you ever use, if you swallow it. You want to dilute. It wouldn't hurt you if you didn't dilute it, but, oh , about half and half, and if you have a sore throat for instance,

well usually it is sore beyond where gargle does any good.

You know, that's why a gargle isn't good for a sore throat.

But you gargle the vinegar just as l ong as you can hold it

and then you swallow it, then you don't drink any water for

a little while. But you dilute it a little, if you can't

take i~ straight. And you don't know what it might do to

your stomach, if you have a sensitive stomach. And the best

thing t o do when you swallow apple cider v inegar is not to

have it on an empty stomach. Have a little something in

your stomach. If you know you are gonna use it, well eat a

half a sandwich or eat a little bit of something, something

with bread or a piece of bread if you can swallow it. But

it is excellent for just about anything.

If you have tooth trouble, if you have a sore t ooth or

your gums are sore or something, from a tooth, just hold

straight vinegar in your mouth as l ong as you can and then

you can spit it out, 'cause you don't want to swallow it

absolutely straight. But then spit it out. Any sort of a

wound, just pour the vinegar on it if you can't douse it in something. It'll BRIGGS 56

OB: burn like the devil, it really will, but it will help it, and it's really good. If you get a bad sunburn. JB: I was going to say my husband did that to me one time.

OB: If you get a bad sunburn, well, dilute it if it is a real bad sunburn, dilute it where it won't burn quite so bad

for quite so long, and really, and your skin won't peel,

your skin won't peel. I have seen people that said their

skin d idn't peel.

JB: I did right across the shoulders, but then the rest of

it didn't. OB: But vinegar is the best thing that you can use. Use it

afterwards, of course, no t beforehand. But it works, it

really works. And we just had all sorts of things, of

course, and also, another thing it is supposed t o be good

for is arthritis. But you have to take it a long time

regularly. Most people won't take it, you know, they won't take it long enough to get something like that well or help

it.

And Indians were real, real enthusiastic people about

kelp. Now it used to you couldn't get kelp. You can get it

from a v itamin store now. Ke lp tablets were supposed to be

good for the heart. Indians in the Andes Mountains used to

go all the way down to the sea t o gather kelp. They believed

in it religiously because it was supposed to be real good

for the heart. And I have seen people that had heart attacks and one of my mother's brothers was one of them that

he took 5-grain tablets three times a day and he stayed alive a long time after the doctors had thought he BRIGGS 57

OB: wouldn't live another day. And finally he just got tired of doing it, I suppose, and he just kinda gave up on his kelp and he got worse and he died.

But kelp was supposed to be good for the heart. I believe it was good for him for a long, long time. Of course, he didn't obey any of the other rules. He kept lifting things. with heart trouble you can't lift things. You are supposed to never - his doctor told him never lift anything heavier than a drink of whiskey or a lady's nightgown. He was always lifting up something without

thinking. He was such a big, strong man, you know. He would

pick up the biggest thing you could find and lift it. Change

a tire, do things he shouldn't do. And that hastened his death, of course. And all sorts, I can't think of anything

right now. Alum, that's another thing. While you were

soaking your snakebite in vinegar, well, eat some alum. JB: Won't that pucker your mouth?

OB: Yeah, it'll pucker your mouth, but so what. If a water

moccasin has bitten you, well who cares about a puckered

mouth. Eat alum. Eat it while you've got your arm or your

foot or your finger in the vinegar. And everything - I doubt

very seriously that that alum helped a bit. Now that's what they did when my mother got snakebit when she was 8 years

old. They made her eat alum. They chopped it up and made her eat it just as fast as she could and kept her foot in a

bucket of vinegar. And she lived over it. It bit her three

times.

So now whether the alum actually did BRIGGS 58

OB: any good and when they Einally got a doctor which was many hours later, time they could get to a doctor, 'cause in that day they had to go in a buggy, well, the doctor said:

"Well, I couldn't have done anything else. There wasn't anything else I could do." But he stayed the rest of the night with the family. He said:"IE she wakes up in the morning she'll be alright, but," he said, "I believe she's got it made." And you know she lived over it. Of course, her leg on that side was a little bit larger than the other leg the rest of her life, she thought, I never measured it. I don't know whether it was not. She always said her right leg was •••

END OF SIDE 2 - 45 MINUTES.