A Visit With Dad

Informational tidbits from a conversation with Mishael E. Norris, Jr.:

The house most of us remember was built about 1944 with lumber salvaged from the old house before it and new lumber bought where necessary. The old house had been on the Al Davis property when Grandma and Grandpa moved there courtesy of Mr. Davis' kindness and $1.00 per year lease. The "lease" was to keep Grandma and Grandpa from effecting a "homestead" on the property.

Al Davis lived somewhere around Refugio and contact with him probably came about because Mr. Davis was either a relative or friends with the Lee family, particularly Edna Jarrell. Daddy says he doesn't ever remember seeing Mr. Davis after they moved first moved into the original house and he doesn't recall any mention of Mr. Davis having ever been paid the $1.00 per year. To the best of his memory, Mr. Davis died about 1946.

Al Davis' property where Grandma and Grandpa lived consisted of 12-15 acres and there was no other house on the property. When I asked Daddy about the dimensions of the house, the size of the rooms and such, he first said the house was 30' x 30' without the porches but was later not really sure about the dimensions. He and Mother both stated the front porch was a "deep" porch and then stated about "10 feet deep".

Viewing the photo of Grandpa in the frame of the porch he was building, I'm not so certain it was that deep. I plan to look at that again and try to gauge it and the overall dimensions of the house in relation to the porch. Grandpa was not a big man and, given his size in relation to the porch he was building, the porch may not have been 10 feet deep. What do y'all think?

When I asked Daddy about the well we all remember to the west of the house, he said it was a shallow drilled well. He said it eventually went dry and he doesn't remember any effort to dig it out or drill it out to make it again useful. At that time, Grandma and Grandpa started getting water delivered into the two barrels we all remember in the front yard by the fence.

Daddy said the back fence was about 10 foot from the porch and that there was no separate fencing for a chicken yard out back around the china berry tree. He also said the outhouse was about 50 foot from the back gate and that there was a barn, not a shed, just a little further out and more toward the front of the house. That is where Grandma milked the cow named Suzy.

We talked about butchering hogs. I remember being very small and seeing a "white" hog hanging from a single-tree evidently after being "scraped". Daddy said the hogs were white only after the scraping. I also remember wondering what the barrels half buried in the ground at a slant were for and finally seeing boiling water poured into it for dipping the hogs to remove their hair. Daddy said I probably wouldn't have seen that at Grandma and Grandpa's house since they didn't do any of that after they built the "new" house about 1944. Prior to that time, they did butcher hogs out under the china berry tree.

More of this "interview" in the next few days.