Family remembrances of Peggy Chiles Avis Collins
(C. Avis Catalog #1001)
This is a compilation of anecdotes told by Peggy Chiles Collins to her son Charles Avis. He added to this file over the years as she imparted each new item.
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Peggy started school a year early, at age five. Her grandmother talked the school into letting her start because all the other kids in the neighborhood would be in school and she would have no one to play with. She was sent to school with a brick wrapped in paper for her to put her feet on because they didn't reach the floor.
Peggy's father died before she was born. He came home ill from playing golf and later died of peritonitis.
She grew up in Temple, Texas in her grandmother's house. Peggy's widowed mother had a job in Austin with a couple of engineers that she went to high school with (became the Brown and Root engineering firm). Because of that, Peggy and her brother Dwight were raised by their grandmother, Maggie Rudd. She learned to ride a bicycle by riding around the big wide porch that went around much of the house. There was a large playhouse in the backyard with window and shrubbery.
During the depression, her grandmother would give sandwiches to the hobos that would come to the door asking for a handout. Peggy said that there was a mark on the telephone pole in the alley near their house, probably indicating to other hobos which house would give food.
At this time, Maggie Rudd had income from rent houses that she owned. Peggy remembers someone coming by to pay the $15 monthly rent.
She told her in-laws when she was due with her second child, Charlie, and they came down from Austin to Houston to be there for the birth. They had been in town for a few days when Peggy didn't feel like eating anything for dinner except Jello. Her husband, Jake, and his father said "Uh-oh, this is it." Sure enough, a few hours later they were driving to the hospital. It was across the street from the Fat Stock Show and they had trouble finding a parking place. So, her father-in-law dropped the rest off and went off to park wherever he could. Charlie was born at 10 pm. From her room, Peggy could hear all the "goings-on" at the Show. An unusual ice storm hit the area and she was lonely because no one could come to visit her in the hospital because of the ice.
When she and Jake were just married, he was stationed at Camp Pendleton in southern California. They had an upstairs apartment in a town called Solano Beach on Highway 1 near Del Mar. As the military vehicles traveled the highway, she could look out from their apartment at the same height as the troops in the trucks.
Her mother, Fay Chiles, came out to California to visit Peggy and Jake on their first Thanksgiving together. This was memorable because she was going to prepare her first turkey and realized that the bird had not been cleaned out inside before being frozen. She and Fay had to do the cleaning themselves.
In Temple during the depression, the kids loved to go out to eat at Cheezy Wynn's. Hamburgers were a nickel.
As a young girl, she had very long hair. After washing in she would dry it by leaning over in front of a big fan. Once her hair got caught in the fan.
Her first child, David, was a breech birth. The doctors had tried to turn him around before labor but couldn't. A nurse misunderstood something a gave her a drug which slowed down the labor. The doctor was furious. The labor stretched out to 18 hours because of that and she got no more drugs. David came out all black-and-blue.
During her childhood in Temple, her mother's cousin Alice Suggs would come visit from her home in Valley Mills, Texas. She would arrive in a big long automobile driven by a tiny female black driver who had to drive while looking through the steering wheel. When 'Cousin Alice' died, her home was used for the viewing of the body and for the gathering of friends and family. Apparently, the tradition was to stop the grandfather clock in honor of the deceased. Peggy's brother, Dwight, was about 12 at the time and during the gathering he noticed the clock stopped and restarted it. Peggy's grandmother Rudd heard the chiming and was horrified. She instinctively knew it was Dwight's doing.
While growing up, her mother and brother and she lived with her grandmother Rudd. They had no automobile and had to walk about a mile to church. Someone would always offer them a ride home afterwards, though.
Her grandmother Rudd's house in Temple was on 1st Street and had 13 rooms.