In the Very Beginning: The Story of My Life….

By Eula Rae McCown

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 31, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469111599

Eula Rae McCown

I was born in Seabrook, Texas in 1927. I graduated from Webster High School in 1944. I married, had three sons, and traveled as an Air Force wife for fourteen years, including living in England and Africa for three years each. I graduated from North Texas State University with a degree in Gerontology and Aging Studies at the age of 58. In 1986, I graduated from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. My first job was as a chaplain in a cancer center in Austin, Texas. I was ordained as Minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1990. Later, I was hired as Minister to Seniors at St. Louis Catholic Church, Austin, Texas a congregation of 25,000 members. I retired in 2001, but remain active in church work in my community.

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Copyright © 2008 by Eula Rae McCown.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

IN THE VERY BEGINNING

A HISTORICAL REVIEW

THE MOVE TO WEBSTER, TEXAS

FALLING IN LOVE

THE BRIDE

HOBBS, NEW MEXICO

ROME, NEW YORK

GOING BACK TO TEXAS

THE TRIP TO ENGLAND

BURTONWOOD AIR FORCE BASE, ENGLAND

THREE ENGLISH GENTLEMEN

RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES

WALKER AIR FORCE BASE

ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO

LUCILLE CHURCH McCOWN

FORT CARSON, COLORADO

FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE

SPOKANE, WASHINGTON

SIDI SLIMANE AIR FORCE BASE,

FRENCH MOROCCO, NORTH AFRICA

WESTOVER AIR FORCE BASE, MASSACHUSETTS

HOME AT LAST; BACK TO TEXAS

VERNON, TEXAS

RETURN TO AUSTIN

MY TREASURES

COPING WITH DYING

BERNIE S. SIEGEL, M.D.

SPEED BUMPS

BECOMING CATHOLIC

ORDINATION

A TOUR OF ISRAEL

MY FRIEND BETTY HIGDON

SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

MY GARDEN OF EDEN

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my family… my beloved sons, Jeffrey, Steve, and Jimmy, and their families, so that in sharing my stories with their children they can get the stories straight from their mother’s mouth.

Let your light so shine before men,

that they may see your good works

and glorify your father

which is in heaven.

St. Matthew 5:16

INTRODUCTION

For a number of years I’ve been contemplating writing down some of the interesting things that have happened to me in my lifetime. As I grow older I’ve seen so many changes in the landscape, morals, families, and the world in which we live. I never dreamed there would be so many changes.

It is hard to know where to begin. I love history and most of our history comes from the stories that our families tell and share with us.

My grandmother Larrabee died while I was living in French Morocco and I was not able to return stateside for her funeral. I wrote to my dad and told him the saddest thing about losing Grandmother was the fact that all of her stories died with her. She was a wonderful storyteller of true stories and now they were gone.

When I was a child growing up, each spring Grandmother Larrabee would take all of her grandchildren to the woods. Our dads would put up tarps for us to sleep under and we would build a big fire. We’d cook our supper under the stars and our parents would stay until after supper and then go home. At that time Grandmother would gather us all around the fire and the story telling would begin. She could scare the bejeebers out of you and enjoyed doing it.

I’m going to write this just as though I’m telling you a story. It is a true story, and in the years to come I hope this story is passed around by my children and grandchildren and their children in order for you to know something about me. My life won’t be just like a vapor in the wind but you will have an opportunity to know me.

I have had a very blessed life. Life is an adventure that is very hard. There is good and bad and hopefully with each situation we learn to have a better life. May your life be enriched by the reading of my book and may God richly bless each of you.

To everything there is a season

and a time to every purpose under the heavens.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

IN THE VERY BEGINNING

It was a cool afternoon in Seabrook, Texas, that 12th of October in 1927. Ray Larrabee had stayed home all day, for his wife Eula, had gone into labor early that morning. They had already arranged for Granny Walden, a mid-wife, to come and help with the birth of their first child. Granny had been a dear friend of my grandmother Heiman, Eula’s mother, for years. She would come and help with the birth of a child and stay for several days to help with the care of mother and child. In those days new mothers were not to let their feet touch the floor for at least a week or two.

There was a fire in the fireplace, to keep the dampness out of the room, and a wood stove had water boiling on it in the kitchen. A bed had been prepared in their living room, so the baby could be born in this room and Dr. Patton, from League City, had arrived to help with the birth. It was a difficult birth and when the child was born, they had a girl. Then there was an emergency. The doctor could not get the baby to breathe. The doctor kept spanking the baby until the baby turned blue. Mama said it seemed like hours before the doctor succeeded and the baby let out a howl. A new life began and that new life was me… Eula Rae Larrabee.

I have always loved my name for I was named for my mother and my dad. Being the first child and grandchild I was much loved and lived a very blessed life. My mother’s mother, Grandma Heiman, was the most wonderful grandmother and she was also named Eula. I learned a great deal from this lovely lady. She adored me. It has been my experience in life, when someone loves you, as she loved me, you respond likewise. I adored her. She thought I could do no wrong and I always behaved perfectly around grandmother, because I could not let her down. I wanted her to think I was perfect. We had a wonderful relationship.

The house in which I was born was always called the house in the woods. Mama always said she could never see the sun rise or set in that house, the trees were so dense.

Before Mama and Daddy were married my dad went to Ellington Field, which had been an Army Air Force Base during WWI, and purchased a barracks building. He tore this down and moved the lumber by wagon to our property and built our home. The house consisted of a living room with fireplace, kitchen, bedroom and bath and the front of the house had a porch and a sunroom off the bedroom.

I can still remember that house. It was located in the woods behind my grandmother Larrabee’s home on Clear Lake. Grandmother Larrabee was of French descent and her home was a very large, beautiful home of French design with dark green shutters closing up the rooms in the heat of the day and opened at evening time to allow the breezes off Clear Lake in to cool the home. Each room had French doors opening out onto a veranda that was across the front and down one side of the home. It was delightful to sit in the porch swing and watch the water of the lake.

My earliest memories of my Grandma were of her working in her yard. She grew beautiful flowers and when she worked in her yard she wore a hat with a large brim and stocking gloves that would cover up her arms and protect her from the sun. She was one of the first skin cancer patients in the United States. She had gone to St. Louis, Missouri to have the cancer removed and there was a large white scar on her face. She was very pretty and the scar just added to her beauty.

At that time there were very few houses around the lake. The main paved road between Webster and Seabrook ran in front of her home. On the other side of the road was a steep cliff at the very edge of Clear Lake.

My dad told a funny story. As a teenager he owned a model T Ford that was stripped down to look like a racecar. No fenders were over the tires, although it did have a windshield. He said driving it on shell roads was hell. He would come home and his ears would be full of shell, thrown up from those uncovered tires. One time he was backing his car out of the driveway when his brakes did not hold and his car went over the cliff down into Clear Lake. He had to get his horse to pull the car out of the lake.

At the side of the house was a huge water tank where my grandpa Bob would water his horses. It was full of beautiful goldfish and we used to love to hang over and splash our hands in the water and try to catch the goldfish.

Some of my earliest memories of the house in the woods were when my brother Jimmy was born. He was born at home 2 years and three months after I was born and I remember the day well. Daddy stayed at home that day and insisted we take a nap after lunch. He had never done that before and when I awoke I had a new baby brother. I was just the age to love to hold a baby and rock him. I owned the rocking chair I rocked him in for years, but finally gave it to one of my granddaughters.

I have always adored Jimmy. As a child I was afraid of death and I would often dream of a loved one dying. I told Jimmy I loved him so much I would die in his place if I could make that decision. I remember writing to him after Jeffrey, our first son, was born and telling him he was on his own. No more would I be willing to die for him, I now had a child to care for.

My daddy made his living by buying and trading cattle and he had built up quite a herd. He had a good friend, Walter Wetzel, Sr. They worked their cattle together in the same pasture. The pastureland was located where Ellington Field is now located. This was a full time job, because of the branding and birthing of cattle and always knowing where they were. These two friends would leave early each morning and work all day. Uncle Walter, as I called him, would come by our house early each morning and drink coffee with my dad and then they would take off together on their horses to tend their cattle.

I was just a little over a year old when Mama gave me the coffeepot to play with on the floor one day. The next morning after Dad and Uncle Walter had drank their coffee and gone off on their horses, Mama washed the coffeepot and found I had put a little black celluloid doll in the pot and Dad had made coffee with this doll in the pot. The doll was now snow white; all of the paint had washed off in the coffee. When Dad came in that night and Mama told him what had happened he laughed and said, That was the worst coffee I ever tasted, but I made it the same as always and could not figure out why it tasted so bad! But that solved that mystery.

Daddy would often use a black man to help him work cattle and we called this man Uncle Willie. One time Daddy brought him home for lunch and while Mama and Daddy ate in the kitchen, they fixed a plate of food for Uncle Willie and he ate on the porch. I wanted to eat with Uncle Willie and they fixed my plate and let me sit outside with him. I said, Uncle Willie, are you really my uncle? He said, Course I is child, course I is! There were no blacks that lived anywhere near and he was the first black man I’d ever seen and he was very kind to me. I loved Uncle Willie.

When I was eighteen months old, Dad decided to sell all of his cattle. I never knew how much money he got for his herd. That was in 1929. He took the money and bought a brand new Ford car and put the rest of the money in the bank. We left home for a visit to Aunt Allie, grandmother Heiman’s sister, in California. We stayed in California for several weeks.

Of course I do not remember any of the trip but I remember Daddy saying it was so hot crossing the desert he would buy ice and cover it with newspaper and put it on the floor in the back to cool the car. That was car air conditioning in the 1920’s.

I remember a story they told of an incident that happened on our way home. They stopped on the side of a mountain for a picnic lunch. While they were eating I had been taking a nap and rolled over and went rolling towards the bottom of the mountain and landed on a rock and it stopped me from going into a mountain stream.

When they returned home the stock market had fallen and all of the money that Dad had put in the bank was gone. He took our new car and gave it to Mr. Bennett, who ran a local grocery, to enable us to buy groceries against the car. After three years he found the job driving the Seabrook school bus. He was making $40 a month and I remember when he told Mama the good news, she cried.

From about the time I was three, friends would come and take me to Sunday school at the Seabrook Methodist church each Sunday. My teacher was Miss Olga Olsen. Our room was at the front of the church as you entered the front door. She hung a sheet of muslin, on a wire line to enclose our classroom and we had a small table and chairs where she taught our class each Sunday morning.

On our birthdays Miss Olga would make each of us a from scratch angel food cake. She was a delightful and loving person. Years later I visited her in Fredericksburg, Texas. She was living with her retired brother-in-law, Fred Olson. She was near 90 years of age. I just wanted to let her know how important she had been in my life. She was the very first person to teach me about Jesus Christ.

There was an elderly retired minister and I believe his last name was Braswell. He would come to the church, when he was home visiting with his family, and lead the singing. His favorite song was Beulah Land. I can still hear him singing, O Beulah Land, Sweet Beulah Land, as on the highest rock I stand, I look away across the sea, where mansions are prepared for me. I view the shining glory shore. My heaven, my home forevermore.

Jimmy had just learned to walk and one day, while Mama was visiting her mother in Seabrook, we disappeared. They searched for us for quite some time. Finally all of the neighbors joined in on the search. Then someone drove by and saw me holding Jimmy’s hand, walking him up the steps of the First Methodist Church. The church was about three blocks from grandma’s house. Jimmy was wearing nothing but a diaper. I wanted to share with him what I had found in that church… Jesus Christ.

Another time my mother had taken Jimmy and me to visit her mother in Seabrook. Dad returned early from working his cattle and rode his horse to grandmother’s house looking for us. After arriving, he insisted on taking me with him on his horse. We went to Mrs. Chapman’s, the only mercantile store in town. There he bought a bright floral piece of material. Then we rode home, on his horse, where he cut the material into a pair of beach lounging pajamas for me. These pants were a popular style with the flappers of the day. He sewed them on Mama’s sewing machine, dressed me in my new beach pajamas and took me back to grandma’s house to show me off. I really did feel important and glamorous that day.

When Dad finally got his job driving the Seabrook school bus, I was on his route. I was the last one he picked up in the morning and the last one to get off the bus after school. The walk from our house out to the road, which ran in front of grandma Larrabee’s house, was just about one block. But as a little girl 5 years old, and in the dark of winter, it seemed like it was miles.

I had a Little Red Ridinghood raincoat and one dark morning I decided I would hide behind a yaupon bush. Dad would not be able to see me there and I would be able to go home and play with Jimmy the rest of the day. Much to my surprise, Daddy climbed up on top of the bus and spied me behind the bush. He began to yell, Sissy, I see you. Come on out now or we will be late! Of course I crawled out and went on to board the school bus with all of the other children. That had not been such a good idea after all. I was so humiliated.

My dad’s nephew, Lawrence Burns and his wife Reo, lived next door us. This was a rural setting and our houses were about one block apart. We had no other neighbors. Reo and Lawrence had two sons, Peewee and David Ray. The four of us children played together most days. I will never forget when I first started to school. I was in first grade, at five years of age, when I announced to the three boys (Jimmy, my brother, Peewee and David Ray) that I was the smartest one of all because I was the only one in school. I was smarter than they were and they would have to do whatever I told them to do. We did a lot of fun girl things that day, like making mud pies instead of riding stick horses. This Utopia lasted less than one day for me. They soon caught on.

When I was in the first grade I began to take tap dance lessons. There was a very handsome young man from Houston, who taught tap lessons one day a week after school. We put on a beautiful show, for everyone, at the Seabrook School that spring.

Seabrook School was an elementary school with classes for the first through sixth grades. Then the students would graduate and go to Webster High School. Students were transported on buses from Kemah, Seabrook, Pearland and Friendswood to Webster High School. There were three classrooms in the Seabrook School. Two grades were in each room. There was an office for the principal and an auditorium.

Each morning all of the students would gather in front of the school, by grades, in single file, and pledge allegiance to the flag. Then we would march into our classroom.

The auditorium had folding chairs, a piano and a stage. The stage was quite large and had the most wonderful screen that rolled down from the ceiling and made a very colorful and exciting backdrop for the stage. There was a scene on this screen and it looked like a path winding through some beautiful woods and along the bottom there were advertisements for three or four local businesses. I remember that one of the ads was for Bennett’s Store. We bought our groceries at Bennett’s Store.

Now, back to our big show. The production was a Negro minstrel show. I don’t know when they quit having these shows. In a minstrel show a lot of the people painted their faces black and would pretend to be Negroes. It was a very fun thing to do. We never saw this as ridiculing black people, for blacks were respected by all of the white people I knew. This show was supposed to take place in New Orleans and there was a riverboat and we presented different shows that were performed, as if to entertain the people on the riverboat.

In the skit, in which I performed, we were dressed as lollypops. Six of my friends danced with me. My costume was bright red and I had a large red, round brim of a hat around my head so I would look like a red lollipop. We sang and danced to the song On the Good Ship Lollipop.

Another fond memory was the time Daddy brought me home from school, on the school bus. As usual, I was the last one to get on the bus in the morning and the last one to get off at night. This day he drove the bus into grandmother Larrabee’s yard. He had never done this before and I could not imagine what he was thinking about. But, there on grandma’s porch was a beautiful, new, red girl’s bicycle for me. He put me on that bicycle and ran me up and down the road (this was just a two-rut dirt road) to our house, trying to teach me how to ride that bicycle. That really was not a proper place for me to learn to ride. But, I was so overjoyed the day that he bought me that bike.

After we moved to Seabrook, I was riding the bicycle one day and turned the corner in front of our home just as our neighbor, Byrd Menard, drove in front of his house and I caught the front wheel of my bicycle in his rear bumper. Of course it threw my bicycle down and I jumped up on top of it and rode it down until it stopped. By the time Byrd got his car stopped he knew he had hit me and he flew out of the door calling my name. It nearly scared him to death. But of course, I was fine.

Daddy was always such a fun person. He laughed and joked all of the time. When we lived out in the woods we would cut down a cedar tree for a Christmas tree each year. We would make paper chains and hang peppermint candy canes on it. We also had little clips that would hold candles on the tree and on Christmas Eve we would light the candles for a while.

During the Christmas season it was nothing unusual for Daddy to run in breathless at night. After leaving the school bus in Seabrook he had to walk home. He would dash in and say; Did you hear the bells ringing? I hope you were being good because I saw Santa Claus with his reindeer peeking into the windows as I came home tonight! He would ring the bells outside before entering the house and he would make deer prints on the ground around our windows. He would later show us the prints to prove that Santa had been at our home peeping in the windows.

It was the custom, at our home, for Santa to blow a horn when he had left our home on Christmas morning. So, we would never try to wake up early, for we knew Santa would let us know when he was through leaving his packages for us. This was smart thinking on the part of my parents. It allowed them to sleep a