Dorothy (Poor) Callaway was born and raised in the River Oaks area. She continues to be very active in her church activities, and still travels extensively with friends. After joining the Historical Society, she was asked to be one of our guest speakers and was a total delight. See for yourself.....below is her story.

I will start this with my parents and how they met. My mother (Buela Head) was born right here in the Castleberry, River Oaks area. They were the family that owned the land where our Jr High(415 Hagg Dr) and High School(215 Churchill Rd) now stand . The Head home place (400 block of Harrisdale) is still standing between the 2 schools, and it is still being lived in by one of the original family, a great granddaughter I believe (actually a Head descendant lives there now) . Their name was Uncle Henry and Aunt Dellie (Dale) Head, they were my mother's Aunt and Uncle who took her in when she was left a total orphan at the age of 13. They already had 10 living children but this didn't keep them from taking my mother and raising her. They would not let her go to an orphan's home.

Of all the years that my mother and father were alive, I never did know how they met because my father lived in Everman, TX and my mother lived in the Castleberry area. One day in church, Roy Head, (one of Aunt Dale's living children who is 95 or 96 yrs old now) and I were talking, and I asked Roy if he could tell me how my mother and dad met. He said "sure I can, it seems like it was yesterday." Your Uncle Bert Poore and Aunt Rexie came to live in this area and your dad came to visit them on the 4th of July. They were having a 4th of July picnic and fireworks and everything down at Trinity River. Now if some of you are older than I am....they used to have a place down there where we could go there and swim and they didn't charge us. You would go where Rockwood Park was; it was right in there. They had stands where you could sit and eat, and picnic. It was a regular swimming hole. (Dorothy's daughter Barbara Throne said the hole is still there behind the golf course parking lot, you can't get to it because of the trees, but that hole is still there.) Anyway that's when my mother and father met, when he came to Ft. Worth to come to the picnic. And of course all the Heads were at the picnic and the fireworks, and this was in 1916. And in 1917 my mother and dad married. They lived in Everman, TX for just about a year I'd say, because my sister Ruth was born in Everman and they moved back here in this area, while she was still an infant. And this is where they lived until they both died.

My sisters and I have lived out here all of our lives.(Someone asked where her and her family lived) Well I'll tell you...we lived a little bit of everywhere! I was born in 1927, to keep you from figuring it, I'm 72 years old. The house where I was born was where White Settlement Rd and Roberts Cut off meet. The French family lived on the Northeast corner, Higgs Novel Nook was on this corner. Gurlets Grocery Store was on the Southwest corner, and our house was the next one West on White Settlement Rd, right now there is still a building sitting where the house was, where I was born. They sell these satellite antennas now. Not in that building but in that area.
We lived there for awhile, then while I was still a baby, we moved to a house that was right behind the Westworth Village fire department (128 Koldin Lane). They just tore this house down about 4 or 5 yrs ago. We lived there for 2 or 3 yrs, till I was about 5. From there we moved to a house on Koldin Lane, and all this time my dad and mother were buying and selling, buying and selling.
Then Mr. Bailey, (Bailey Ave was named after) started selling the lots down on Ohio Garden Rd, and I will never forget my dad bought 2 lots and they sold for $250.00 to $350.00 apiece. And they were over an acre of land, each lot was. My dad built 2 houses, we lived in one and rented the other. Of course usually who ever rented it, was kin to us. It was either a sister and her husband or an aunt or someone who was always kin to us. Later on, one of the houses my husband(Charlie Callaway) and I lived in. And this was the house that was right next door to the glass house.

This was back when we didn't have streets. There was a gravel road or a dirt road from Jacksboro Highway to Churchill. And from Churchill on to the school (Castleberry Elementary) it was woods. It was a dirt road going just to Churchill Rd and then it was woods from there to the school. That is how I walked to school, through the woods. You walked on a path going through the woods to school every day.
I can't remember exactly what year the street was named Ohio Garden Rd. But the Greeks came in and bought property, and as everybody knows, this was the Pappajohn family.
I knew her for years before she married into the Pappajohn's, and I've known the Pappajohn's ever since they've been in the area. They moved here from Ohio and bought the land where their gardens still are. So our street was finally named Ohio Garden Road.
(The question was asked, was it paved in 1935?) It is a possibility that it was by that time. (Same person said, the only 3 paved roads in 1935 were Ohio Garden Rd, Roberts Cut Off and Meandering Rd.)

At this particular time my father (Ike Poore) worked at the city street department. And if you worked for the city, you had to live in the city of Fort Worth. We weren't in the city at that time, we were in the country out here. Isn't it funny the things you remember after all these years, our route number was Rt. #2 Box 480D. Mrs. Marsh taught us well ! Anyway...when the city would find out that my dad and us were living out here in Castleberry, they would make us move back into the city of Fort Worth and we would move over to the North Side. We would live over there for a couple of months till it died down then we would move back. We never rented out our place, because my dad was a pig farmer, and we would have to come out every day and check on things. We would always move back until they found out, then they would make us move back again to the city. That's why we couldn't find my pictures of when I was growing up, I went to Sam Rosen Elementary School part of the time, and that's why I wasn't in a particular one of the old school pictures of Castleberry.

Now I started to school at the age of 7, and back when I went to school if you weren't 6 by September, then you had to wait until the following year to go to school. And all my schoolmates were a year younger that were in my first grade class.
Mrs. Irma Marsh was my first grade teacher, she was also my sister Ruth's first grade teacher who is 10 years older than I am and my other sister Jerry, who was 6 years older, she taught all of us in the first grade. When she was superintendent of the schools and my kids were always up there at the schools, she would meet me in the halls, and she would say......Oh Dorothy when I see you I feel so old !! But when I see Ruth..I feel ancient !!
My older sister (Ruth) had five generations that went to Castleberry and I had 4 generations. All 3 of my children, daughters; Margaret Gilliland, Barbara Throne and son Garye Callaway and 2 of my grandchildren; Blake and Aaron Throne, graduated from Castleberry High School.
The first school out here was at Inspiration Point, it was named Marine. This is where my grandmother (Margaret "Maggie" George)went to school, it was a log building. My mother went there at the site it is now (Roberts Cut Off and Ohio Garden Rd), but it wasn't even a wood or brick one, it was kind of like a log cabin at this time. I went there when it was a 2-room brick, and it was only one big room but they had folding doors, so they could petition it off and make two rooms. And Jackie?, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't she (Mrs. Marsh) used to teach 1st 2nd and 3rd grade in one room and 3rd 4th and 5th in the other room? Yes, I believe so, Jackie Campbell Sparks, answered.) Because we didn't have enough room so we all had to be in the same big classroom when it first started. Dick Pipkin said, we had the 3 room brick, then that 2 room frame building . . . Yes, it was there later on. Dick Pipkin said there was a single room for the 3rd grade. Mrs Stevenson taught us in that room, she was the first one to teach in there, and they continued to build until it is what you now see. When we finished there we could either go to North Side or Arlington Heights. North Side was closer so I went to J.P. Elder Jr High then on to North Side High School. During the time, we were doing the moving back and forth thing, and we had to ride the bus to school, and if you missed that bus....tough luck, you walked....to school and back home. And if you had to stay after school, you had to walk home and it was quite a journey. So you tried not to do anything that would keep you after school.

Now we'll get down to the kind of dirty part, but the fun part. Where I lived we used to have a dance hall right on the corner, from about 1936 until about 1940, it was called Circle Inn, and wobble out. It was just called Circle Inn but we all said, "wobble out". The funny part is, I was a teenager by this time and I loved to dance all of my life. To get to go down there my mother and dad went and sat and watched every move us girls made. We could not leave that table that my daddy knew every move we made. And of course I can understand why. Linda Claridge asked, "Now where was the Circle Inn?" It was right on the corner of Ohio Garden and Isbell. Someone said where the car wash is now, but Dorothy said the Circle Inn was really on Ohio Garden Rd, (West of the intersection) where the vacant lot is now. Someone said, There used to be a printing company there. Yes, it was Manning's Printing. Someone said Did it start out in the old streetcar? Yes it started out in the old street car then they added to it. They built on to it then they finally tore out the streetcar didn't they? Yes they did. And speaking of dancing, when I was a kid, we lived right by White Settlement Rd and there was a place called Crystal Springs (short distance West of her birthplace). That was one of the biggest dance halls in town. Someone said, at night you could hear the Crystal Springs Band. Oh yes...you bet! The band that played when I was a kid was Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, and Bob Wills was his fiddle player. Mary Earwood said, Dorothy, where was the Lone Wolf? Someone else said, There was another one, Jack's Play House, across the street from Burger's Lake. Several folks, at the same time, were discussing the names of different places and what happened there. You all are getting ahead of me!.......Hang on! Ha..ha. Going back to Crystal Springs, my dad on the weekends was bouncer, Friday and Saturday nights. Now my dad was a little bitty man but he could throw a 300 pounder out of there any day. But talking about trust....my mother didn't trust him, I'm assuming this was what happened, I was so little I don't remember, so when my dad worked....my mother and us 3 girls sat in the booth every Friday and Saturday night, because my mother watched my daddy! Several chuckles and giggles come from the room. And this was when Milton taught me how to dance. He taught me how to do the Charelston and everything so of course I will always remember that.

The first barber shop was on the corner of Tulane and Oxford...right Jackie?
Jackie Campbell Sparks says, that's right! It was owned by Mr Campbell, Jackie's dad. It was built in his back yard in 1936. His daughter Jackie and I went to school together. I can think of so many of us that had more fun together. And we got in a lot of fun harmless trouble together, but not much. Jackie speaks up and says, Haircuts were a quarter, children's haircuts were 20 cents and a shave was 15 cents. They both laugh.
Like I said all these kids and I.......Jackie and Lavonne (Nicholson) and Robert(Pipkin) and all of us went to school together up there having a great time.

At this particular time that I can remember we had 4 grocery stores in this area. One was Gurlets on White Settlement Rd, one was Willetts on Meandering Rd (5400 block), one was Proffits on 1100 Roberts Cut Off, right across from the school and one was Lewis's (1225 Yale), it was named M.L. Gordson first. Then the Lewis's took it over. This was on the corner of Yale St and Notre Dame. Dick Pipkin said, what was the one down on Meandering Rd? That was Willetts wasn't it?. Then he said, no prior to that one? Closer to Burger's Lake. I don't remember that one. He says, If I had a map I could tell you right where it was. Someone else said it was on the triangle wasn't it? On the Y of the road down there. J.D. Talley?? was the name. Baylor Street used to go straight on across to Utica Street and that's about where the store was.

The first ice cream bar was Higgs Novel Nook on the northeast corner of White Settlement Rd and Roberts Cut-Off.

The first washateria that I can remember, was 3 doors West from where I live right now, 4327 Ohio Garden Rd. The stucco house is still there, the house was real pretty and it still stands. The people's name who ran it were called Loveless. She had one washing machine and you would let her know when you were coming, and she had a 2 burner, kerosene plate that she would heat one of these old large oblong tubs that had handles on it, that she heated water in. She would pour it in and she had 3 wash tubs like this. Those tubs had a certain name and I've looked everywhere but I can't find what they were called. Dick Pipkin says, We heated our water in a washpot. Oh yes, up till then we did too! And my mother scrubbed on a rub board!

Mrs. Pennington owned a full washateria up on Yale Street . Then at one time my sister owned one on Barbara and Isbell Rd, called Ruth's Washateria. Dick Pipkin says, Mrs Pennington's husband died and she had to have a way to get by. Jackie Campbell Sparks says, She had 3 children and was expecting another one. Dick Pipkin says, She had a regular laundry. Jackie says, I thought it was a washateria. Dick says it was, but it was a full laundry too. We all did....we had washaterias but we all did the laundry work, then did the washing too. When my daughter was reading this, she said, Mother, there was this big long tub you had that had two washers and an agitator, I said that was the part I worked on. That was where I did laundry when you brought it in, I weighed it by the pound, washed it , dried it, folded it, wrapped it up and you came and picked it up or my husband did. My sister and I owned one on Barbara and Isbell Rd, until my husband and I opened the first top loading laundry mat on Churchill Rd.

We had two lakes that I can remember we could swim in. One was Burgers Lake (1200 Meandering Rd) which is still in business and Knights Lake (Dorothy said northwest of Burgers) , which was closed when they built Carswell Air Force Base in about 1939? Someone spoke up and said it was called Tarrant Air Base first. Then it was Carswell Air Base. I can remember Jimmy Stewart (well known actor) coming to Fort Worth to make a movie about it. (Movie was "Strategic Air Command").
I met Jimmy Stewart at that time, and I was a teenager and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Someone said, after it was Tarrant Air Base, they named it after some foreigner to us from up north, the public raised hell and said why don't you name it after somebody from our area. So they named it after this fellow named Carswell who was shot down over the China Sea. Dub Ray says, He lived up on the 1600 block on Denver St, I played football with him.
Anyway.....Knights Lake was where you could swim, fish or do about anything in that tank out there, or what I later called the tank because it really wasn't that much, it didn't have the running spring water that Burgers Lake had. I think that was around 1941 or so.
Next door to our place the Hoefleins lived next door to us, they had a daughter Minnie Marie. Her and I were very best friends. Their house many of you don't remember, it was called The Glass House (4309 Ohio Garden Rd. Her mother was a good person but a very peculiar person. You never did know how to take her, when you went over to play you had to pull your shoes off to go in her house, she would never allow you in her house if you didn't .Bill Hoeflein was his name. And his wife was the type that if she said JUMP, he said "How High". He made forms and then concrete blocks, and he would put anything in the blocks, anything from broken glass to rattlers off a rattle snake into a bottle. You name it.....he had it in this house. In fact there was a pond inside the house and it had a live alligator in it. (named Alleyoop) They finally covered their house with blocks made of this stuff. We never did take any pictures of it though. We were real good friends for several years but after a while our fathers had a disagreement so we never got to play together anymore.
Mr Hoeflein started building a feed store in front of his house, and it blocked off both pieces of our property, we couldn't even see to get out of the driveway. So my dad went over and said "Bill you're not building that feed store", and he said
"Ike...you watch me." Well, there was a rock wall between us and my dad reached down and picked up a rock about this big and I said "No daddy, don't" and just about that time he let it go. So it hit Mr Hoeflein on the shoulder and then he got down off of it and my dad went in the house, and called the Sheriff. And in 24 hours that feed store was torn down, because it was against the rules and regulations.
So from that day on it was kind of ....well......we didn't do a lot of speaking with them. Minnie Marie and I would slip around and try to be friends when our parents were not looking you know, but it was never the same. Shirley Bloomfield said "It was a little bit rocky huh?" Yeah....a little bit rocky !! ha! ha!
But Mr Hoeflein continued to build, he was continuously doing things, even after my husband and I married and lived in the rent house right next door to them. He was up on his house putting a new roof on it one day and my husband was out working in our yard and looked over and Bill Hoeflein had fallen backwards on the roof. My husband crawled up on the roof and carried Bill down and he was dead. He had had a heart attack on the roof. And from that day on we were treated pretty nice by Mrs Hoeflein, she was always nice to my husband and I. Someone said, it's a shame it didn't hold up. Well, it held up for many years before it was finally demolished. Dorothy's daughter Barbara Throne spoke up and said, They bulldozed it in the middle of the night, then they had it hauled off the very next day!

I've got to go back to the grocery stores and let you all know something else.
The Proffits had the grocery store across the street from the school, at Roberts Cut-Off and Baylor Street. This lady was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen. As I kid I thought she was just beautiful. I don't know whether she was another nationality, but she was a little bit different than the average American woman was. She had jet black hair and a white streak that ran right through her hair in front. As a girl I thought she was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. Every night when I said my prayers I asked the Lord to give me hair like this. The whole room breaks out in laughter. LORD ! When I was 19, I woke up and I had a white streak in my hair!!! The whole room really breaks out in laughter ! I'll never forget, I said "Well Lord, you're a little late but you did it !" Well anyway she was such a sweet person, she was good to all us kids. It didn't make any difference what you were over there for, she was so good to you. Her daughter's name was Ema Jane. I was hoping she would be here tonight, if she is she hasn't spoken up and said anything and I don't know her, what she looks like.

Is Mitzy Lucas here tonight? Linda Claridge said, "No she didn't make it." Mitzy Lucas and I were also friends, when we were all out here, and as Jackie and I were talking about, when you went to visit somebody you couldn't stay over an hour. Because no one's mother would let you stay longer than an hour, it didn't make any difference who you were. From school we could get out and visit. Of course the Lucas brick house still stands right where it did (909 Roberts Cut Off). Dick Pipkin says Corky Makarwich built a house in between the Tindall and the Lucas house.
Anyway we would go down there and play and they had a parrot that talked. And this parrot that talked didn't say real nice words. So any time you went over to play. Mitzy's mother, Tad Lucas would put that parrot in the hall closet. She wouldn't let him out because he would say words that she knew we would go home and tell our parents.

One more thing that I want to tell that I think is pretty interesting and I don't know how many remember. But down where Sam Calloway Rd is now, I don't remember what that road was called before it was Sam Calloway. Someone said Whiskey Lane. Yes ! Whiskey Lane. Right on the Trinity River. Dick Pipkin says, Because half the people that lived on it were drunks ! Laughs burst out from the room. Linda Claridge says Blondie Dahl has something to say. Yes Blondie ! Blondie Dahl says, that Calloway Rd was named after Judge Calloway. Right! I remember that Calloway Road was named after Judge Calloway. Blondie Dahl says, The house is still standing. Shirley Bloomfield says I thought It was named after you Dorothy. No, she laughs, it has an O in it, mine is all A's.
At this time there was an old run down shack right down on the river bank and we had a black woman who lived there, and she was the only black woman that lived in this community. Everybody called her Nigger Ida. And it would infuriate my mother to death. She would say, No! Her name is Ida, you don't put that nigger in front of it, because Ida was so good. When I was born she came in and helped me to be born. She came in and would hold me and tended to my mother and I, and delivered me. Now Ida had a son that was the same age as I am, just a little bit older, and she was still nursing him. My mother swears that when she (Dorothy's mother) got sick, Ida nursed me so that I wouldn't get sick. So my mother thought that Ida hung the moon and stars. No church out here would let her go to church, of course at one time, we didn't have anything but the Trinity Baptist. But anyway they wouldn't let her go to church. Dick Pipkin says, there was another black family down there at Blackstone, just this side of ......well, right at the city limits..... Now I don't remember another black family. Dick says, Well there was an old black woman who used to come and visit and sit on the back row of Trinity Baptist Church.
That was Ida. That was Ida, you bet! Dick says, She lived down there where I was talking about....... Well she might have moved by that time.
But at first, they lived in a shack on down the Trinity River and I mean literally..a shack. She had 3 sons. Anyway, the first time she went into a church, my mother took her in and they said she can't come to church here and my mother said, "You watch her!" She sat her down on the seat beside her and she was right there and from then on they let her go to church. For the rest of her life she could be found on the back row. But I had to tell that. Dick Pipkin said, You know when she died, they buried her in a cemetery right there on White Settlement Rd. Real old cemetery right there at Roaring Springs Rd. Someone else asked ,What was her last name? I can't think of her last name. Mary Earwood says, We've got a picture of her grave! Shirley Bloomfield says it's the graveyard close to Carswell.

I know I am supposed to be telling you about Castleberry and River Oaks, but I have one more last thing to tell, to add to his (Dub Ray's ) North Side years that he talked about last time. My husband and I had a very dear friend. My husband traveled for years and this gentleman traveled with him, whenever my kids and I ever got to go on vacation, was when we would go with him a for a week, and we would have a good time while him and his buddies worked. We had this one particular gentleman, that we would sit around with at the swimming pool at night, the kids would be swimming and he played his guitar, and he was a wonderful country singer. You all probably would know him because he wrote a song and it was about a chapel on the corner of Clinton and 12 th streets. Crying In The Chapel was the song, the friend was Artie Glenn. He lived over there at that time, and I had to tell that because he was such a dear friend. And that's it !!
The whole room applauded and many thanked her.

After the meeting adjourned folks were still standing around talking and it seemed that no one wanted to leave. Dorothy remembered another story that she wished she had shared with everyone, so she began to tell a group of us that had gathered.
For years folks could go to the Castleberry elementary school grounds on Friday nights and movies were shown for free. It was all outside. You could bring your chairs, blankets or whatever and sit and watch the movies. They would have drinks and food etc to sell. Dorothy and her sisters hardly ever missed these Friday night get togethers, because that was the gathering place for all the kids back then. Since they all had to behave while attending school during the week, this was a great time to talk and giggle and be kids. So this particular Friday night Dorothy and her sister Jerry walked to the school as most of the folks did. The girls however in order to get to go anywhere , had to follow Dad's Rule No 1, which was......WALK TOGETHER WHEREVER YOU GO! They would get in serious trouble with Dad if they didn't stick to this rule. After they got there, the plan was made for Dorothy and her sister Jerry to meet back at the flagpole, after the movies were over. Jerry however, had other plans that didn't include kid sister. When the movies were over, Dorothy went to the flagpole and waited and waited, but no Jerry. After most of the folks began leaving, she got scared of being there by herself so she took off walking for home, which was a pretty long way in the scarey dark, looking over her shoulder and scared all the way, jumping behind bushes and trees everytime a car passed. She didn't want to get her sister in trouble with Dad so she tried to creep in the house without waking him. Mom was awake and Dorothy told Mom that Jerry didn't show at the flagpole, they both didn't want to wake Dad and tell him. At that moment Dad walked in......"Dorothy where's your sister?"
Dorothy, knew he meant business so she told him, "I don't know Daddy! She didn't show up at the flagpole!" He headed for the door to his old pickup outside, and looked at Dorothy ...."Come on!!" He drove to Jerry's friend's house, knocked on the door. When they answered, "Is Jerry here?" he asked. They didn't want to say. Dad says, "Of all the people I know, you'd be the ones who would know where she is, so tell me right now! They finally told him she was with her boyfriend Bo White. Dad drove back home, told Mom and Dorothy to get in the house and turn off the lights, and then he sat on the porch in the dark, waiting . . . . . .
Jerry and Bo show up in the car, and Dad goes straight to Jerry's side of the car, yanked open the door and told her to "Get in the house!"
He then went around to Bo's side, jerked open his door, grabbed him by the collar, yanked him out of the car, right to his feet, and looked Bo straight in the eyes and said, " You get your butt out of here now, and I better not see you around here again or I'll kill you!"
Shortly after that Bo went into the service!
Some 23 years later, Bo came back into the area, surprised Dorothy one day by showing up on her front doorstep. He asked about Jerry.
After a while, Dorothy mentioned to Bo that he should go on down and visit Dad and Mom soon. That they would like to see him. He was hesitant. His memory was still very clear! Later, Dad told Dorothy that a car pulled up in front of his house, sat there for a minute and then out steps Bo White. Dad says to him,
"Well Good Lord! you're Bo White! Come on up here! Bo sheepishly looks at him and says, "Are you sure Mr Poore?? You remember what you told me you would do, the last time I was in your front yard?! "
A short time later, Bo and Jerry were married. . . .it lasted for approximately 30 years. Jerry died March of last year.

The evening that Dorothy and I talked about the above story, she was telling me about another thing that took place that some folks in the area might remember.

Some folks might remember the baseball diamond on Meandering Rd, on the north side of the street, close to Camp Carter where they used to play. Huey Dugan coached the team, his daughter's name was Mildred. Dorothy's dad, Ike Poore was umpire for them for several years. Other teams from surrounding cities would come and play.

On the last part of the tape someone asked about the earlier discussion of Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies. He said wasn't he out with a little teenage girl and wrecked out right across the street from Billy Woods house. The girl's name was Catherine Prehody(not sure about spelling), she was 16 years old.
They hit a tree, it killed her. And her daddy said if Milton Brown didn't die that he would kill him. But Milton Brown later died. Dorothy said it happened right down this way on Ohio Garden Rd, where the road curves like an S between the corner and Pappajohn's. Between Mr Pollard's house and Pappajohn's place.

On another part of the tape where a lot of folks were talking at the same time, I could make out that Don Quayle asked if Dorothy remembered when the Meeker house was built. It's located a little north on Ohio Garden Rd, west from Dorothy, and is still standing. And she said . . . . .
Oh yes I remember, Mr T.E. (Tom) Bettes help build that house. In fact the house we're living in, Mr Bettes built it from scraps that the Meekers let him have, from when they were building the Meeker place. When my daughter Barbara and husband (Benny Throne) started to remodel and began to tear out walls, they found a wall of solid wooden doors one right after another sandwiched between walls of sheetrock. Yes, we knew the Meekers quite well, they lived up there in what we all called "The Castle." Don Quayle said, it was real exciting in those days for someone to spend that kind of money. Dorothy agreed. Then she said when the Meekers lived up there, they were big oil people. She was trying to remember who the famous, big heavyset singer was, that often came to visit them. Someone said a name, she said no, it was a man. He would come to see the Meekers and weighed at least 300 pounds, would come down the road and drive by our house in a convertible car, it was all white, and he always had this foot long cigar, I loved to smell that thing from a distance. I'll never forget it she said.
Someone finally said Fats Swallow. Yes, that could be, she said. (Later that evening Dorothy said she thought of the man's name, it was Paul Whiteman, a real famous singer in that day.) We always knew when he was coming because Mr Bettes was the Meeker's yardman and he would tell us.
Also she said that not too long ago she called Frank Bettes, (Tom Bettes Son) because when her daughter Barbara and husband Benny went in and remodeled the house that they found two of Frank's report cards from school. So she called and said " Frank we found something in the attic, do you want them?" And he said, "Was it report cards?" She said "Yes". He said, "No! I had all F's, I don't want em."
Dorothy said he did!.....had all F's. And he hid them. Ha! Ha!