When God Calls, You Will Answer!

Jr.

Home Place

2920 Park Avenue, Bay City, Texas

As you can see from the picture, the old home place is not in the best of shape, but old memories are still fresh in my mind. I can remember the days of laughter as I grew up in the neighborhood. We always had something to keep a child’s mind interested. I always felt that I had a perfect childhood. And I have always said that I would not change a thing. Growing up in Bay City, Texas, in the 1960s and ‘70s was a wonderful experience for me. My hobbies were hunting and fishing, when I was not in school, and I loved to do both. I hunted as often as possible, because my family ate the wild game that I killed and all of the fish that we caught. We also grew a garden every season and harvested it for the family.

My grandmother, Martha Drake, was a strong black woman who taught us all we needed to know about preparing wild game. She was a woman of many talents, and she kept us healthy with her home remedies. When she came from the market with a large bag of oranges at the beginning of winter, it meant we were going to get our big dose of one of her home remedies, castor oil and orange juice. She would press an orange on a dish made specifically for squeezing the juice out of citrus. Then she mixed the juice with castor oil for us to drink real fast, because that was the only way to get this remedy down.

Another one of grandmother’s old remedies was hog-hoof tea, which was made by saving the hooves of a hog at the first frost of winter. Arthur Ross, Jr., my oldest brother, raised a Poland China female hog which he bred once or twice a year. He sold the piglets, but kept two males for the freezer. My grandfather, Albert Hill, came over at the first frost with his rifle and shot the hog, then cut it up. Everything was done in order, because the meat had to be treated properly. The water had to be hot in order to boil off all of the hair. There was no time for error, because the pork could go bad. Nothing would go to waste, because my grandmother would put the pigskin and hooves in her big black, cast-iron pot and make a fire under it. Lard was used for cooking, and the pigskin makes a crackling, which is used to make crackling bread.

Those hog hooves were kept until someone got sick with a high fever or the flu. Then she would make her old remedy called hog-hoof tea, and the person who was sick was given the tea and placed under heavy blankets until the fever broke. These old remedies were very good in those days, because that was the way things were. My mother and grandmother had those remedies, as well as their faith in God, who heals all manner of sicknesses.

We were raised on Park Street, on two lots purchased by my grandparents, George and Martha Drake. The lots that my grandparents owned were set-up to build two homes, one for my grandparents and one for my father. My grandparents’ home was the first to be built and the whole family lived there. The home had two bedrooms, a long kitchen, a living room and a front and a back porch. In the back bedroom, my father had a small bed, and there was a long bed for my mother and younger sister. My younger brother had a small bed in my grandparents’ bedroom. My two older brothers had rollaway beds that folded up in the daytime. We did whatever we had to do as a family to make ends meet until we could build a second home.

Meanwhile, my grandparents and parents purchased the lumber from a house that had been demolished, and started to build our home. We had to begin pulling the nails from the pine two-by-fours and the longer beams. Pulling nails from the pine two-by-fours was a hard job, because the pine wood was very hard. But all of us children were happy, because we knew that this was for our future home. Once we got enough beams and lumber completed, the grown-ups began to build our home. My grandfather and my father began building the second house on the property, and they built it strong. I don’t remember how long it took them, but I can remember when we moved out of my grandparents’ house, because everyone had a bit of relief. We now had our own space, another two-bedroom house with a living room and a dining room with a kitchen. There was a front porch and a back porch too. It was not a big house, but we were happy to be moving into our own home.

We always had something to occupy our time and I believe that love had a lot to do with it. I grew up in a neighborhood where people looked out for each other. These were times when neighbors believed in helping one other, because that was what black people did in those days. I can remember that when my parents killed a hog, the whole neighborhood was involved. My grandfather, Papa Hall, as we called him also nicknamed, The Warrior, did the slaughtering of all of the hogs. He would use a 22-rifle and a sharp knife. After shooting and cutting the hog’s throats, they would place the hogs in boiling hot water to scrape all the hair off. We would butcher two hogs a season to be placed in the freezer with the vegetables from the garden that we harvested every season.

It was like a miniature farm on our property. We had a chicken pen with laying hens and a Rhode Island Red rooster with a mean character. He would not allow anyone or anything into the hen house but my grandmother. He knew not to mess with my grandmother, she ruled him. I remember one day my baby sister was swinging in her swing in the backyard and this crazy rooster had the nerve to fly out of the chicken pen, jump into my sister’s lap and attack her. Now, you can imagine what happened to that rooster when my grandmother heard my sister seaming. Oh, it was on! My grandmother came running out of the house and saw what this crazy rooster was doing. She yelled at him and he knew immediately that he had messed up. My grandmother did not play when it came to her precious granddaughter, Rhonda Marie Ross. My grandmother had the rooster in sight and she ran him down and cornered him. She grabbed him by the neck as she spoke some very choice words. She had a death grip on this rooster and she rang his neck until she heard it snap! Then she guided her hand up his neck and the rooster’s head popped off.

With his head in her hand, she said to the rooster, as if he could understand, Now, kick! You S.O.B., kick! I’m going in the house to boil a pot of water to put you in! You’re going to make a good pot of chicken and dumplings tonight! She continued yelling at that rooster as she threw his head across the yard. You should have known better! What is wrong with you! Have you lost your mind? Well, now you’re just bleeding all over the back yard! You should have stayed in the chicken pen and minded your own business! With that, she took my sister into the house to tend to her wounds because she had some deep scratches on her ankles. That was the last of the Rhode Island Red as the blood pumped from his headless body and he ran around the yard like a chicken with his head cut-off.

My grandmother, Martha Drake, was a woman that could do a lot of things and she taught us everything she could that would help us later on in our lives. After tending to my sister’s wounds, she came back outside and gathered up the rooster to place him in the boiling water and to pluck his feathers. We had chicken and dumplings that night just as she had said; but that rooster was a little tough because of all of that running around he did in his life.

My Father

Sergeant Arthur Ross, Sr.

My father was a master plumber and owned his own business. During those times, as a black businessman, my father endured a lot of persecution from his white customers in order to receive his proper pay. He always had to under-bid his jobs, just to get the work. Even with under-bidding and completing the job, it was not guaranteed that he would be paid for the work. There were times when people wanted to pay him with something other than cash, sometimes food or vegetables, one woman wanted to pay him with pecans. Then there were times when they did not pay at all. But we were a strong family and worked through the hard parts of life.

The winters were cold and outside work was hard on my father. One particular winter, I observed my daddy walking across the front yard out to his little shop in the back yard where he kept supplies for his plumbing work. Winter was so cold that year; the grass was frozen under his feet, you could hear it as he was walking. My father was in desperate need of a new pair of shoes, but frozen feet didn’t stop him from doing what he needed to keep his family fed.

My brothers and I had the opportunity to work with our father from time to time, learning the business of plumbing. Back then, everything was done by hand; digging the trenches with shovels for the sewer and water lines. Now, even though this was hard work, my daddy was good at his job. Plumbing was a good business when people paid on time. The repair work paid well but this was unclean work with broken sewers lines and other messy repairs. I remember that my father worked hard and he was excellent at his work. Those are a few things that I learned from him, to work hard at what you’re passionate about. I surely learned that from my daddy but I never heard him quote any Scriptures. I am sure that he came to know the Lord Jesus Christ before he died.

Arthur Ross Jr.; James Douglas Ross; David Earl Ross; George Arnell Ross; Rhonda M. Ross

Spring Time

The spring time in Bay City, Texas is a time when the grass is green and the trees, flowers and gardens are all in bloom. This time of the year always brings all kinds of exciting things for children to do. When we were little, we loved to explore the fields, pastures and the ponds and streams. We would snake hunt, excited to see how many snakes we could find and kill in a full day.

Blackberry season was in full bloom and we would gather the berries for my mother and grandmother to bake blackberry dumplings and pies. We would set out early in the morning to start picking berries. Once we got to the Catties farm, we would be looking for a way to cool off from our berry picking. There was a long pond on their property that provided an excellent place for swimming. There would be snakes