Destination: Hillsboro

What's growing in that field?
On this year's spring break, Mom and Dad joined us for a trip down to Hillsboro to show the kids where Mom grew up.

Grandmother and PawPaw lived on a cotton farm outside Waxahachie when Mom was born at the Waxahachie Sanitarium (above) on September 25, 1942. Mom was the only one of Grandmother's seven children who was born in a hospital (Ila Mae 1924, Elouise 1927, Lila 1930, Cecil 1931, Gilbert 1935, Milton 1938).

When Mom was still very little, they moved to this rental house on Smith Street.




Mom lived on the downstairs west (right) side of this rented triplex on Craig Street between the ages of three and five (so approximately 1945-1948).


By the time Mom started first grade at Travis Elementary (no longer standing) on the south side of Hillsboro in 1949, they had moved again to this house on Vinyard Street.


Before Mom started third grade in 1951, they moved to this rental house on Elm street. It was in this house that they got their first television.


The move from the house on Vinyard on the south side of Hillsboro to the the house on Elm on the north side of Hillsboro came with a change of schools. Mom went to third and fourth grade here at Franklin Elementary.



Mom lived in this house on Walnut Street for approximately nine years, from the start of fifth grade in 1953 until she graduated from high school in 1961 Grandmother and PawPaw continued to live here until 1967, when they finally bought their first home. When Dad met Mom, Grandmother and PawPaw still lived here.


Mom grew up attending Line Street Methodist Church with her family but started attending First United Methodist on her own when she got to high school because the Methodist Youth Fellowship program was so much more developed at First United. I attended Uncle Cecil's funeral here in the summer of 1990.

Grandmother and PawPaw moved to this house on Park Street in 1967. We spent most of my childhood Christmases here through 1975. It was in this house that Santa brought me a Guns of Navarone playset, my first bicycle (red, with training wheels), a long-sleeve O.J. Simpson jersey,and an electric football set featuring the 1974 Super Bowl VI match up between the Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins. When the whole family was here, people got up very early, and the smell of breakfast sausage filled the house. At lunch, Jorge and Paula and Lisa and I sat at a card table and drank sweet tea. Between meals, we played "Runaways" or "Castaways" in the back bedroom and rehearsed shows that we later performed for the adults in the living room. Grandmother announced that she was going to get ready for bed before anyone else, but I beat her. I slept in her bed in the room with PawPaw. He was quite a snorer. PawPaw took me in his Ford pickup to get buzzcuts at the barber shop on the town square where Lucky Tiger hair tonic was on the house. Grandmother and PawPaw liked to go on evening drives around town in what I remember as a cream-colored 1977 Pontiac Catalina (Mom has her doubts about the vehicle model). When we stopped at the Dairy Queen, I'd get a Dilly Bar or a corny dog or a Cherry Dr. Pepper. So would Grandmother. Sometimes we'd eat at the Kai Kai lounge, which was decorated with a faux African motif.  PawPaw smoked cigarettes (Winstons?) and left the butts in a nifty, covered ashtray stand that I liked to play with. I also liked to bounce on his bouncing black nylon ankles when he stretched back in his black vinyl lounge chair and rub the white crewcut on the back of his neck. He liked to watch rasslin'. Eric Von Erich was the bad guy. Grandmother and PawPaw lived here when PawPaw died of a heart attack in January 1976. On multiple occasions after that, I spent vacations (summer, spring break) here visiting Grandmother. She had one record I liked listening to over and over--a collection of Disney songs; I did interpretive dances to. I stayed up late--all night?, playing with my football cards, sometimes watching black and white movies on Channel Eleven ("Mutiny on the Bounty" with Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh) and slept late. When Jorge joined us, he and I played catch in the backyard.Grandmother cooked french fries, salmon croquets, and pork chops.

Mom was valedictorian of the 1961 senior class at Hillsboro and drum major of the Eagle Marching Band.

PawPaw died on January 13, 1976. Grandmother died on April 15th, 1994. They are buried here at the Hillcrest Garden of Memory Cemetery, west of Hillsboro. So are my mother's sister Eloise, her brothers Cecil, Gilbert, and Milton, and her niece, Rhonda, who died of leukemia when she was 12 years old. I attended PawPaw's funeral and Cecils, but I was living abroad when all the other funeral services were held. Mom and Dad have lots here.

Pablo adds a few wildflower blossoms to Grandmother and PawPaw's arrangement. Built in 1874, the Hill County Courthouse was consumed by fire on New Year's day, 1993. Hill county native Willie Nelson donated the proceeds from two benefit  concerts to help pay for the building's restoration. In January 1920, the courthouse square was the site of a racist outrage.