Barney Senior, Part 3

1. Barney McCoy Smith, Senior  (Part 3 of 4, Early 1900s Entertainment in Texarkana, TX)

[These are the words of Barney McCoy Smith, Jr., recorded on an audio cassette tape, January 1999 in Macomb, Illinois.  The first part of the tapes describe his father, Barney McCoy Smith, Sr.]

[Words that are unclear are marked with "????"] 

This is Sunday morning, about 11:30, and here I am talking just to the black box again. It would be a lot easier if you [Ken] were here and I were talking to you and you could talk back or ask questions or comment or add your own ideas.  This is a new experience. I guess the closest we’ve come up to this time is talking to somebody’s telephone answering machine—kind of like when you call somebody up and they don’t answer the answering machine. *laughs*.  Well let’s see… Mom and I went to church this morning, got back. Now it’s 11:30. Tell me some of the thoughts you have....

I could list just the names of just about anybody in my high school graduating class in 1938, but I would have a hard time listing more than ten or fifteen of the names of students that I had in all the years from 1955 to 1989? There must be some reason for that. And it is applicable to what we’re doing right now. I remember a lot of details of the 1920s, 1930s, probably more than I remember from the 1970s, the 1980s, and I don’t know an explanation for that. I think it’s pretty commonly understood though. 

I think I’ve come across another great truth here. I was talking about the fact that this is not easy to do.  That there is the explanation why most people don’t do this. Most people don’t try to write down the entire family history… It’s too much trouble. They don’t have the time or don’t make the time. But some of the memories are too painful. The fact that it’s not easy is probably the explanation.

I was thinking… what did my father like to do for entertainment? 

In his lifetime there was no such thing as television. Radio became very popular from the 1930s, and up until the time of his death in 1945. Listening to the radio at night, you’d have your favorite radio programs, like the certain one that comes on at Monday night, and another that comes on Tuesday night. So it was pretty much like it was in Television for a while, although it’s not so much like that anymore I think.

I remember my dad liked the Jack Benny Program very much. He also liked Milton Berle. He found a lot of enjoyment out of radio, and of course he listened to the news at ten or something like that. I never saw my dad smoke a single cigarette. He liked cigars; he would smoke cigars now and then. After prohibition ended he would now and then drink a bottle of beer. He was not one to go out to a bar or to a cocktail lounge. Any beer he drank would be at the house. My mother didn’t approve of course. Whiskey was out of the question. In fact the word “whiskey” was out of the question almost. 

Speaking of curse words, my dad didn’t use foul language. In fact as I grew up nobody around me did. These kind of four-letter words that you hear so much of today were absolutely forbidden. The worst anybody here would use… now and then Uncle Eli would say “hell” or “damn,” and that was considered to be very bad. He shouldn’t do that. It was okay to say “durn” or “darn.” That was for “Damn.” It was okay to say “heck” for “hell.” “Gosh” for “God,” or “golly” for “God.” Even saying “golly” or “darn” or “durn” or “heck”… even that was considered not very nice.

Of course this reminds me… the society that I grew up in, which means my mother’s family basically and my fathers to a large extent I guess… They were not what you might call common people or low-class people. If they were poor it was financially poor, but certainly not poor in the sense that they were low-class people. They were  very high-class people in that, well for example, we were church-going people. We were very careful about our personal appearance. We lived on the right side of town. We had servants who would come in about once a week usually. We always wore clean clothes. Maybe they weren’t expensive, but they were always clean. It was a sense of pride that we had that low-class people just didn’t have. There was definitely a class distinction. We were not what was known as “poor white trash.” Poor white trash would use bad grammar, foul language. They wouldn’t bathe very often, things like that. We were definitely not in the [lower class.]

I was talking about the fact that my dad used to bring on, on Saturday night, the funny papers as we call it back in those days. Later we called them cartoons or the comics. I remember the names just about all of them—Mark[?] [????] and Little Orphan Annie [????] and so on and so on. Until James came in 1933, of course I was an only child, and my father was very attentive, very affectionate. I was awfully important to him. He obviously enjoyed having me around. He played with me. For example at night he would talk to me about things that had happened during the day. 

Since he’d just come back from World War I in the past few years, he used to tell me… he used to talk to me about the experiences in the war. Some of the things he told me I didn’t understand, and I don’t remember, but I do remember that he spent quite a bit of time telling me about his wartime experiences. I know he was in the medical corps. I don’t know what his rank was, whether he ever got to be a sergeant or whatever, but he was in the medical corps. He brought back from World War I… I remember a gas mask that he brought back, and he brought back his helmet. The tin hat they called it, that the soldiers wore in World War I. 

As I said he enjoyed spending time with me and talking to me, playing with me. At about this time, early 20s, airplanes and parachutes were becoming popular. He would take a big pocket handkerchief, and on each corner he would attach a string, and then to the four strings he would attach a rock of some kind. He’d throw it into the air and it would come down as a parachute. That was something I enjoyed as a little bitty kid.

He used to like… I guess it was special on Sunday morning, if he and mother were lying together in bed before they got up, he would like for me to come get in bed with him. Sometimes he’d make sort of a tent out of the covers, and we’d get under the cover together and play like we’re at a tent. In fact he… I guess one of my earliest Christmas gifts from him was a little prop tent that he bought and gave me. I kept it all… actually all my [????] until just a few years ago when I [inaudible]. It was supposed to be a little tent which we’d never gotten any use out of. It just shows his affection and the fact that he cared for me.

It’s sad that we know so little about my father’s family. 

Next post:  Family members and relatives from early 1900s in Texarkana