CA307

Audio interview with Gladys Roberson Avis about her life
(C. Avis Catalog entry #307)
(Document ID #612)


This is a recording of Gladys Roberson Avis being interviewed by her grandson Charles Avis.  It was made at the apartment of Betsy and Charles Avis in South Pasadena, California in November 1977.


The life of Gladys Broyles Roberson Avis as told by herself to Charles Chiles Avis November 1977. 


>OK. What date were you born on?
March the 23rd 1893.
 
>And where?
In Clay County, Texas.  My father and mother were Nora and Mart Roberson and he was manager of - the foreman of a ranch in Clay County at that time.

>A ranch?
Well, give me a few minutes to think, if you'll turn it off so I can think.

>Something like Wilson?
No, it was, it's been so long since I've thought of it, I don't remember.

>Oh, that's alright.
It's a short name, but I don't remember.

Then we moved to Holiday, Texas, where he and Mr. L. F. Wilson were in the ranching business, and we lived out on the ranch.

>How old were you then?
Well, I wasn't old enough to go to school, so I guess I was about three years old. And my two brothers and my older sister went to a country school there, in the country.

And finally we moved into the little town of Holiday, for some reason, I don't know why we did.

Then from there we moved into Wichita Falls, and we were all in school there.  I started to grade school when I was in Wichita Falls, when we moved to Wichita Falls.

And then eventually, my father was still in the ranching business, but we would stay in Wichita Falls, and he was ranching in New Mexico with Mr. Wilson.  And in the summertime, we would get on the train and go to New Mexico and spend the summer.  Get on the train - the Fort Worth and Denver - and go to Amarillo, spend the night, and then go on to Texico, New Mexico the next day, then on out to the ranch, which was 15 miles from there.

And we enjoyed being there.  We liked to watch the cowboys catch their horses early every morning, the ones they were going to ride during the day.  Each cowboy had several horses allotted to him, so he wouldn't ride the same one all the time.

So we liked to watch that and watch them milk the cows, everything like that.  We just thoroughly enjoyed it.

We had - the foreman of the ranch stayed with us during the summertime, while the cowboys and all of them were going to the roundups all during the summer, where each rancher would find his own cattle and take them to where they belonged.  And then they would have to dip the cattle because of ticks.  And they had a huge dipping vat where they would run the cattle down through this solution of medicine, whatever they used.  They'd run them down one side and up the other.  And we watched them do that.

And if they were not too far away from the ranch, we would go over and spend the day and, maybe take some food such as cakes and pies and things like that over to the cowboys for their lunch.

And my two brothers worked as cowhands during the summer, and they were paid the wages just like other cowboys.  They had to save that money when we went back to Wichita Falls. And they'd have to buy their clothes to go to school during the wintertime with that money they'd saved.

Then, finally the - oh, settlers - who were coming out to settle on the free land in New Mexico, started taking up all the land, and they didn't have enough land to run their cattle on.  So, eventually they sold cattle, and we moved to Farwell, Texas, and lived there several years.

>When did you live in Amarillo?
1895.         ————— She later changed 1895 to 1905 —————

>Was that between when you lived in Wichita Falls?

That was after we moved to Wichita Falls.  Dad wanted to build us a home in Farwell, Texas.  So while they were building it, we stayed that year in Amarillo, Texas, so we could go to school. And we stayed there one winter, and then went on back to Farwell, Texas and went into this new house he had built for us.

>And that was when? When you were how old?
Well, as I remember, Clyde and Harry [.. garbled ..] high school in Wichita Falls in 1895.  And that's the reason we stayed there that long.

>You were only two years old then.
I guess I was.  But I remember that they, oh, I've left out a lot of it, but I can't go back now and tell too much.

>That's all right.
Well, I can't think of anything else to tell you.  Except when my father sold cattle, he put it in a business in Farwell, Texas.  There was a bad year when the farmers didn't raise anything, so finally the store was closed because they were not making any money.  In fact, they were broke.  We were broke, and that was why we moved back to Wichita Falls.  But, one reason was that my father had asthma, and the doctors told him he'd be better off in the lower altitude.  So that was one reason we moved back to Wichita Falls.

And I'd finished high school when we lived in Farwell, and when we went back to Wichita Falls, I started working.  I think I was about 16 years old when I first started working.  And I worked in the alteration department at one of the better dry goods stores, and did that until I was married.

>That's where you got your good sewing talent, isn't it?
Well, I never had a sewing lesson in my life, but I guess I did a good job because I stayed with him for a good many years.

>When exactly were you married?  When was that date?
In 1920, I guess. Wasn't your dad born in 1921?

>I think so.
But it was 1920.

>In Wichita Falls?
Yeah. We lived there until - that's where Jake Jr. was born, and he was, I don't know, nine or ten years old, I guess, when we moved to Austin.  We lived in an apartment, of course, you know that, for two or three years, and then we built a home on Claire Street.  You know where that is, don't you?

And I don't know how long we lived there, but if somebody wanted to buy it so badly, they just almost ... I didn't want to sell it, but Jake did, because we made a little money on it.

>But you all had designed it and built it just the way you wanted it.
Uh-huh.

>Was that about the only house out there?
It was one of the very few.  We bought the lot because it was right next door to some friends of ours who were going to build, but they never did build, and we did.  And that's where the Edwards live now.  It formerly belonged to Bob Calvert, and we bought the one just east of it.  And it was a pretty little house.

>Somebody bought that one, and you built the one two doors up?
We found that we could rent a house, some friends of ours were moving, and that's when we rented this house on Landon Lane and lived there.  I don't know how long we lived there, but until things settled down and we could build again.  See, that was during the war.  So when we could, we built this house where we're living now.