"James Noble Haile"

Part XI

Paw bought about 100 goats the summer of 1907 and kept them in the Chitwood pasture.  He had a Mexican that stayed with them all the time.  Each night the Mexican would herd them to a big pen that Paw built and stay right there and guard them cause if there wasn't somebody with them the wolves would get them.  Paw would take grub and supplies to the Mexican every few days.

In the spring and summer Paw would bring the goats to the ranch and let them eat the weeds out of the pasture.  I have herded goats on the home place a lot myself.  We only had barbed wire fences and they would go right under it if someone wasn't there with them all the time.  Paw kept Mexicans most of the time to help with the cattle, herd the goats, and cut wood off the creek bottoms.  I have sold many a cord of wood for $2.50 that the Mexicans had cut and hauled up to the ranch.  We always had plenty of wood to burn in our fireplace.

I remember one time he had about 40 or 50 Mexicans including women and children, camped down by the river.  Every Saturday some of them would go to Hico to get their groceries in little buggies.  This time there was about 4 buggies full of them went and it was dark when they got back to the river.  There was a man on horse back came up on them from behind and passed them and when he came to the front buggy he pulled out his pistol and shot the driver in the stomach, then he ran.  The Mexican was wounded so bad that he couldn't ride in a wagon so the other Mexicans carried him on to the camp then they came up and told Paw about it.  Paw got the sheriff from Hico and they tracked the horse back to a neighbor's barn.  Buck Massengale was the one that killed the Mexican.  He was just a big overgrown kid and was as mean as a hunting dog.  Well, when Buck saw that he was caught, he pulled out his pistol and shot himself.

We raised lots of goats.  We ate them all the time ourselves, sold some to the neighbors, and shipped some to Kansas City on the train.  Most of the time Dud and a Mexican would ride the train with the goats just to be sure they got there alright and to be sure they were properly sold.

A ranch operation as large as Jim Haile had required lots of people to get the work done.  The spring calves had to be castrated and branded and driven to market.  The horses had to be broken, branded, and some of them sold.  The goats had to have constant attention and all stock had to be doctored for screwworms, ticks, wire cuts, etc.  The fence had to be repaired constantly, the land plowed and planted.  The oats bound, shocked, threshed and the straw stacked for winter.  The cotton had to be picked, the corn gathered, the stock fed in the wintertime.  Jim Haile had his own children to help and he also kept Mexicans almost the year around but he needed more help too.

He hired extra ranch hands quite frequently.  Wylie Trammel was one young man that had worked on the ranch for some time.  He was raised over at Genters Mill three or four miles away.  He worked for Paw for a good long while and he and Sue got to going together and first thing you know they decided to get married.

On December 8, 1907 in the early afternoon Wyley Trammel, who was 25, and Susan Allie Haile, who was 18, were married at the ranch.  Arthur Scott, a Hamilton lawyer friend of Wyley's and a justice of the peace performed the ceremony.  After the wedding vows were said we had a big dinner.   All the young folks in the community were there.  And, of course, Paw gave them a horse, a cow, and two pigs.

The following children were born to this union.  Gertrude, September 20, 1908, Oveta, March 1, 1913, Audrey, March 23, 1916, Everett, January 29, 1918, Thelma, August 21, 1921, Illa Ruth, January 24, 1924, and Reginal, July 4, 1928.

After they got married Wyley and Suc lived down south three or four miles on his brothers place.  Then they lived across the road on the place that Doc Carson owned, then they moved to the Groomer place on the river that Paw had leased, then they moved to Fairy, then they moved on a place right close to Hico, then they bought a place on the mountain and lived there a year or two.  An oil company built a pipeline across the mountain and Wyley walked the line and looked for leaks.  He did that for a good long while, then he got in bad health.  He had ulcers on his lungs.  They figured that a dry climate would be better for his health so they moved to west Texas and lived there quite a number of years.   Then they moved to San Antonio, Texas where he worked in a parachute factory during the Second World War.  They both lived in San Antonio until their deaths.

Christmas of 1907 was like old times.  Carl and Lola and their two sons, Oran and Clyde, had come down for a visit.  They got there in time to spend Christmas with us.  It was a Sunday night and we were all sitting around the fire and Dud wanted to play some ring plays, which would be a little like square dancing today.  There was Suc and Wyley, Carl and Lola, and Alma and Dud.  Wyley was a good caller - he could sing Ole Joe Clark and other songs like that.  Well, we played three or four games of ring plays and then we sat down to rest a little.  Oran was just a little boy sitting there watching us and he really got excited seeing us go around and around and change partners and when we sat down to rest he said, "go around again Daddy!  Go around again"!

"They stayed a week or so after Christmas and we had such a wonderful time," Alma recalls.  "Lola seemed to be so happy being back down here with all of us and when it was time for them to go back to Oklahoma we were all very sad.  We took them back to Hico in two buggies.  While we were waiting for the train to come in, all of a sudden there was a car came around the corner of the station!  Well, Mollie was just a little thing about 8 years old and she had never seen a car before.  It scared her so bad that she ran and jumped over the fence," Alma laughs.

"I miss Big Sam already", Paw said as we were driving back home.  That was Paw's nickname for Lola.  He had nicknames for all of us kids.  He called Ollie 'Man'.  I guess it was to make Ollie feel like a big man when he was a little boy.  He called Ada "Bunch" and he just shortened Dudley's name to "Dud'.  He called Lola "Big Sam', I guess it was because she was a big girl.  "Suc' was the name he gave to Allie and he called me 'Tug'.  "There was a school teacher staying with us when I was born and Paw said what'll I call her.  The teacher said that when he was little they called him 'Tug' so Paw said well, that's what we'll call her.  He called Kate "Pos' and I don't know where he got that name.  He called Little Jim 'Hoot', Mollie was "Modie', Cubbie was 'Cuie' and Eller was "Ella'," Alma recalls.

"Paw took a notion that he wanted some oxen.  I guess he was sorta curious about how oxen worked as compared to horses so he went to east Texas and bought two black 3-year-old oxen and shipped them back to Hamilton County on the train.  They were hauling cordwood down here below Hamilton to an oil company that was drilling a well.  They used the wood for firing their boilers.  The boys were using horses to pull their wagons and Paw was driving the oxen and you know you have to walk along beside the oxen and it was a pretty long walk.  Well, Paw made two or three trips and he decided that driving oxen wasn't for him so he sold his oxen," Alma laughs.

"Paw loved to go coon hunting at night," Alma says.  "He bought a coon dog from someone in Ft. Worth, but the dog was a lot older than he was supposed to be.  The old dog never would stay home.  One day Ada went into her kitchen and there lay that old dog under her table.  Finally the dog left us and went all the way back to Ft. Worth."

Jim Haile was looking forward to some paint colts out of Mango, but it would be next spring before they would come along.  Mango was running loose with Jim's mares on the ranch.  "We still had old Glass-eye and I decided to ride her one day.  We weren't allowed to ride men's saddles cause it wasn't lady like.  I was riding sidesaddle and Wyley and Suc and Kate were with me on horses.  Old glass-eye was a racehorse and it was in her blood to run, so all of a sudden she took off running and it scared me to death cause I couldn't get her stopped.  Kate said, "Catch her Wyley!  Catch her"!  But he couldn't cause old Glass-eye just ran faster and faster and she could out run Wyley's horse.  Finally I got her to slow down and I started talking to her and finally got her stopped.  It was a scary thing for me," Alma recalls.

It seemed like December was a marrying month for the Hailes.  Ollie, Ada and Sue had married in December and now Dud was getting married and it was December 1908.  "The Lynches were from east Texas," Alma Remembers.  "In about 1905 they moved up there within a mile or two of our place and they had three grown girls in the family.  Before Wyley Trammel married Sue, he went with one of the girls and Dud went with another one."

Dudley Jackson Haile and Allie Lynch were married at her parent's house on December 3, 1908.  "They lived in the little gray house just down the hill from us that the other kids had lived in when they first married," laughs Alma.

The following children were born to this union.  Jim, Lillian, Mable, Gracie, D.J., Cecil, Oliver, Wilbur and Eva Murrel.

Happiness does not always remain as a constant companion to any person or family.  It was about the first of May in 1909 that Lizzie complained of her leg aching.  The next day her leg was swelled up and had turned blue.  "Paw had the doctor come out," Alma recalls.  "He pressed on Maw's gums and blood ran out.  All of her folks died from T.B. of the lungs and Maw just knew she had T.B.  The doctor said she had T.B. of the bone and not of the lungs.  The swelling never did go down and her leg was still blue.  She just laid on the bed most of the time and us girls did all the work.  I am sure that from what we know now, she had sugar diabetes, but of course, we didn't know anything about that in those days."