Recollections and Connections Transcript

[Transcript of interview with Louise Jackson, recorded as part of the Springfield-Greene County Library District's 2010 Big Read. For more information contact the Library at 417-883-5366 or visit us on the web.]

SC: This is Steva Carter at the Brentwood Library, and today is March 31, 2010. We’re with Louise Jackson today, and she’s going to tell the story about the coonhounds.

LJ: When I was a child in the 1940s growing up in central Texas our little town didn’t have Rotary, or Lion’s Club, or any service clubs like this. There were only three things for men to belong to, the local church, the local Masonic Lodge, and the Lee Andrew Coon Hunters Association. All the men who were leaders in the community were members of all three; all except my father. He was a member of the Methodist Church. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge. But he couldn’t be a member of the coon hunters association because, you see, they insisted that he had to kill a coon. Now, number one, my father didn’t like to hunt. He, secondly, he could not stay up late enough to go out with the coon hunters but it irked him beyond words as a leader of the community that he was not a member of the coon hunters association. Every year when they did the July the Fourth goat roping and barbecue, he would give a goat for the barbecue, but he wasn’t a member. And every fall when the coon hunters had their watermelon meeting, we all went, but he wasn’t a member.

One day, along about dusk, he was driving from our small ranch to town and by sheer happenstance he accidentally hit and killed a coon. With what I always thought was great presence of mind he stopped the pickup, got out, picked up the coon and threw it in the back, drove straight to Roscoe Kraven’s house - Roscoe was the president of the coon hunters association, came out, knocked on the door, and held the coon up its tail and said, “Roscoe, here’s my coon.” Roscoe said, “Bob, I don’t think that’s what the coon hunters meant by having to kill your coon.” My dad looked at him and he said, “Roscoe, you never said how I had to kill a coon, you just said I had to do it. Now I want to be a member.” And he said, “Well, I guess you’re right.” So from then on my father was a member of the local coon hunters association.

[Laughter]

SC: What a wonderful story. That is so great. That is so great. Well, do you have any other memories you want to share?

LJ: Yes, I have a good memory of my father talking about the Depression. Now I’m a child of parents of the Depression and it affected me all my life, but here is the story that affected me most powerfully. When my parents graduated from college, each of them took seven years to get their degrees, they married and by a great miracle each got a job. That was unusual. My father was the head of the state tuberculosis sanitarium’s dairy, and my mother had a job teaching English in the local high school. My dad had a group of men working with him out in the pastures helping the cattle and one day one of the men brought a sandwich wrapped in a bread wrapper, because that’s what they used, wax paper, back then. And he put it up in a crotch of the tree to protect it while he worked in the pasture. But it wasn’t up quite high enough and a cow came by and ate it. And my father said, he was always tender hearted, and said “Louise, that man broke down and cried. That was probably the only food he had that day, one sandwich.” And I was heart-broken. I said, “Daddy, what did you do?” He said, “I went back to the kitchen at the hospital and I made him the fattest ham sandwich I could make and I brought it back and gave it to him.” I still think to this day when a grown man had to cry because the only thing he had to eat that day was the sandwich that the cow had taken, those times were very hard. They were very hard. And those are my two stories.

SC: Those are great stories. Thank you so much for coming in.

LJ: You’re welcome.