JW Heacock Family Travels
February 13, 1998
Introduction
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| Camping on the Nueces River |
In trying to understand why I feel compelled to travel and live like a gypsy, I thought it might be useful to try to understand Grandpa Heacock, who set the standard for travel. Because I don't remember Grandpa J. W. Heacock very well (but carry many of his genes), I thought it might be useful to visit with his son, Steven Heacock to take advantage of his excellent memory. The following are notes that I took while visiting 86-year-old Steven in his home in Austin, TX on 2/5/98. I specifically asked him to tell me about Grandpa Heacock and the family trips to Wyoming and California. I scribbled notes as fast as I could, so had to try to fill in some blank words when typing the notes. Hope that any words I used do not change the essential meaning of Uncle Steven's remarks. Steven wanted to make it clear that there were two J. W. Heacocks, Grandpa J. W. Heacock (Sr.) and J. (Joe) W. Heacock (Jr.) who was Grandpa's son.
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Family History in Edinburg
According to Steven Heacock, his father Joseph Wilson Heacock, "was born in July 1877. He left for the Klondike to search for gold in 1897 and returned in 1898. He married Fanny Knowles in 1899 and his first son, Richard, was born in 1900. On June 13, 1913, the family moved to Edinburg, TX.
Dad was a Quaker and found the morality of the gold fields objectionable. He was athletic and had strong hands. In his hardware store in Edinburg, he would challenge others to a contest that they could not usually win. He used a broom handle. Two individuals would hold the broom handle and try to twist it so that it would slip in the other person's hands. The one who lost his grip first would lose the match."
"Dad had a gold earring and itchy feet." He was a sort of gypsy and loved to travel. He would say "Come on Mother, let's go." ("Mother" was a name he used for Grandma Fanny Knowles Heacock.) This meant for her to round up the kids that JW affectionately called Richard, Dofey (Dorothy), Polly (Esther), Steven, Mary, and Joe. Steven remembers his dad saying "Good gad, who in the heck are you?" when kidding Steven. "Heck" was about the extent of his cussing.
"The family moved to the Rio Grande Valley in 1913. He built a home on a 20-acre farm west of Edinburg. Dad quickly realized that he was not meant to be a farmer. He sold the 20-acre farm and moved the house -- that he had built on the farm -- to the location, many of us remember on West McIntyre Street." This spot is now occupied by the Pan American University Library.
"Dad became one of the first two city commissioners of Edinburg, Texas. Maybe it was in this position that he first began to have a conflict with the Sheriff of Hidalgo County, A. Y. Baker. Sheriff Baker was a very powerful person in Hidalgo County and had his thumb on lots of money in the county. He built a large mansion in the south part of Edinburg. Baker was a student of John Nance Garner, who became Vice President of the United States. Garner taught Baker who to kill and who to repress. It was rumored that Sheriff Baker confronted a Mexican/American in front of his ranch north of Edinburg, pulled out his silver-plated 45, shot him dead in front of his family and took his property. He would give a deputy $20 to kill a Mexican that owed him money. Edinburg was a frontier town!"
Evidently, the conflict between Sheriff Baker and JW grew to be more than just verbal conflict. The Sheriff must have challenged JW, "who would not fight because he was a Quaker." The first church that the Heacocks attended in Edinburg was a nondenominational church started by Fanny Heacock and some other women. Mrs. A. Y. Baker was a Sunday School teacher. She and Fanny Heacock got along in church, but Sheriff Baker and Dad were poles apart. "However, A. Y.'s son Gillespie Baker and I went to school together. A. Y.'s daughter, Emmagene was the queen of everything even though she was a homely little gal. The Baker family had three Mexican maids." As testimony to the sheriff's toughness, "He would eat a spoonful of chilepequenos, chew them slowly, lick his lips and swallow" without flinching.
"In 1927-28, the Good Government League, who opposed A.Y. Baker, planned a political tour to Mission, TX. from Edinburg and planned to visit all the communities in between. West of Edinburg, the cars suddenly had several flat tires. Apparently, Son Baker (A. Yancy Jr.) had spread a keg of roofing nails on the road. However, the opposition to the sheriff must have worked because A. Y. Baker was defeated in his quest to be reelected."
"A fellow named Doughty was county judge when Baker was sheriff. (I went to school with Doughty's daughter.) Ed Couch decided to run for county judge in opposition to Judge Doughty. Ed Couch lived in Weslaco and his grown son worried that his dad would be killed, so he moved into the front room where his dad usually slept. The next morning the son was found with an ax buried in his head."
Heacock Hardware Store
"With a loan from Henry Klossner's bank, Dad built the hardware store in Edinburg. Henry was a large man of German extraction. (Closner Street in Edinburg was first named Klossner after the banker, but the spelling was changed later. Maybe the names Klossner and Heacock were not politically correct. After Klossner closed his bank in Edinburg, Dad began to do business with Charles Green in San Juan for 4 - 7 years. Anyway, the hardware store prospered and soon expanded to include a furniture store and a farm equipment store. Dad was known for his honest dealings with his customers. One day when he realized that he had accidentally short-changed a customer, Dad chased him a block to give him a nickel."
Steven and my father, Charles Sterling worked for JW in the store. Steven remembers seeing a "man stagger out of the courthouse and fall to the ground. A county clerk named Charlie Fortson had shot his brother-in-law when asked for money. Somehow Fortson was found not guilty in a trial held in the same courthouse."
Trip to Wyoming (1921)
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| Loaded Nash |
The relative affluence generated by the hardware store became obvious when JW decided to purchase a model 1920, maroon Nash touring car with a black leather top that could be opened. The family used it to take an extended trip from Edinburg to Wyoming and back. "We left in the summer and returned before school started. My brother, Joe was born in 1919 and was almost two years old when the trip started. We began the trip with Dad driving the Nash and Dorothy driving a model-T truck flatbed that rolled on rear tires made of hard rubber. She never had to shift because the truck had a worm-gear before the differential. The top speed for the Model-T was only about 10 to 15 mph. Dad had built a green-painted, canvas cover that he placed over the bed of the truck so that it looked much like a motorized, covered wagon. Dorothy was a good driver and I rode with her."
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| Dorothy Driveing Model-T |
"A fellow named Knight and his two sons operated a scam on the north side of Hidalgo County. They had a team of mules that they used for two purposes: (1) to haul water which they dumped into a mud-hole and (2) to pull cars out of this mud-hole when they got stuck. They charged $5 per car to pull them out. Dad mumbled their names over and over during the remainder of the trip. I can remember their names because Dad repeated them so often. Five dollars was a lot of money in those days."
"I was eight years old when we took this trip and could sometimes outrun the truck, especially when it was going through the sand. Once I dropped off the truck to pick up something along the side of the road. Dorothy had not seen me drop off. I was forced to run almost a mile to catch up with her. Two days north of Edinburg and still south of Falfurrias, the road was all sand. Now, these sand dunes are covered with shrubs, but then it was only open, blowing sand."
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| This photo may come from some other trip, but it shows the problems they faced, such as fixing flats. |
"Mrs. Jigs Turner lived across the corner from us in Edinburg and wished to go home to Greenville, TX. -- so we took her. The Model-T was too slow and rough, so we left it at Mrs. Turner's home in Greenville. Dorothy and I then moved into the Nash where we rode for the rest of the trip."
"Most of the roads we traveled had no highway signs. Between the Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio, there were no highway signs. Only the major highways had some signs. Sometimes the highway number could be found on culverts. The exception was the Lincoln Highway in Nebraska, which had highway numbers painted in blue on telephone poles. The Texas Highway Department only started placing highway signs along its highways in 1917. One of the first contracts was let to the father of a fellow named Charlie Miller from Del Rio. Even then the plan was to place odd numbers on highways running primarily north-south and even numbers on those running east-west.
As we traveled, Dad had everyone alerted to watch for highway signs. I don't remember ever getting lost on the trip. However, we did use the process of trial and error to find the right roads. The only paved road that we found in Texas was at the Bexar County line. When I started working for the state highway system in 1945, many major roads were still unpaved. Consequently, we almost always traveled in dusty conditions. If there was a breeze blowing from behind us, when we were forced to travel slowly, we were engulfed in dust. We all became almost desperate to find a clear stream or lake for washing off the dust. The girls wore khaki riding britches and shirts during the trips and found that having a dirty neck was no disgrace. After WWI, tan khaki was a popular material to wear when taking trips. However, when we visited a museum or something the girls would wear dresses."
As we traveled, Dad had everyone alerted to watch for highway signs. I don't remember ever getting lost on the trip. However, we did use the process of trial and error to find the right roads. The only paved road that we found in Texas was at the Bexar County line. When I started working for the state highway system in 1945, many major roads were still unpaved. Consequently, we almost always traveled in dusty conditions. If there was a breeze blowing from behind us, when we were forced to travel slowly, we were engulfed in dust. We all became almost desperate to find a clear stream or lake for washing off the dust. The girls wore khaki riding britches and shirts during the trips and found that having a dirty neck was no disgrace. After WWI, tan khaki was a popular material to wear when taking trips. However, when we visited a museum or something the girls would wear dresses."
"We camped one week in a Denver park near Boulder, close to a lake. All night beaver slapped the water with their tails when they dove. We listened to this sound all night long. We traveled up through Cheyenne and back down through Nebraska and Kansas. We were gone for more than two weeks. Dad drove all day and was usually worn out at the end of the day. He would say 'My day is over; it is now your job.' Mary and I got firewood because it was necessary to have a fire. Dorothy and Esther got out the bedrolls and Esther was the entertainer! She knew the songs and words and would coach Dad when singing around the campfire."
"In Wyoming, we put up the side-curtains in the touring car to keep out the cold and rain. We saw a big pile of black stuff that someone identified as coal. We had seen only mesquite fires before that time. I picked up a sick magpie that traveled with us for a couple of days until it died. In Colorado and Wyoming, when we met a car with Texas license plates, we would all hang our heads out and yell. It was rare -- maybe a week would pass -- before we would see an out-of-state license plate. Whenever we saw a man with a white beard, we would all say, 'zits'. One of us just made up the word 'zits' and it stuck. The roads were all dirt, dragged by local folks to make them smooth."
"Mother could pull miracles with meals. We carried a grub box that I still have. It was possible to buy ice in many towns, especially if a railroad ran nearby because the ice was shipped primarily by railroad. Thus we kept a chunk of ice in one end of the grub box where mother kept milk and butter. She kept us fed very well!"
"We had a big bedroll that was carried on the right front fender of the car. It contained a tarp covering to keep the dew off in the morning and the bedroll off the ground. Mother's one main request for Dad was to find a sandy campground providing a soft spot for her hips at night. She would say, 'Wills or Dad', please find a soft place for my hips.' There were almost no commercial campgrounds, so we just camped along the road. We never stayed in a hotel and motels had not yet been invented."
"Joe and I often rode in front with Dad and Mom. I also sometimes rode, belly-down, on the bedroll with the wind in my face. My Mom somehow managed to hang onto me with her fingers in my belt loops. The Nash also had a couple of thinly padded, folding, jump-seats that folded onto the floor. No one liked to ride on them, so they stayed on the floor most of the time. The car was not very wide, so we rode so closely together that our hips touched. Mary had bony hips, so I did not want to ride next to her. When we did ride together, I sometimes held my elbow against her hip bone. When we hit a bump, my elbow would dig into her hips and she would yell. This would make Dad angry. I did not trust my sisters, Esther and Mary, but Dorothy was OK."
Heacock Trip to California (1925)
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| New Dodge |
"For our second long trip, Dad bought a new, 1925 Dodge Sedan. It sported a 60-horsepower, four-cylinder engine and a top speed of 45 mph registered on the speedometer. It came equipped with the first balloon tires ever seen in Edinburg. It was geared very low so that it could climb a steep grade in high gear. It had a trunk in the back and a rack that clamped on the running board that could be unfolded -- in accordion fashion -- to hold suitcases. With this setup, we could travel for weeks."
Grandma Fanny served as navigator, chief cook, and arbitrator of disputes that arose from sometimes dusty, tired children. "She pasted a map on cloth that delineated the entire route. On trips to Wyoming and California, public roads often passed through private property. When reaching a fence-line of a pasture or new property and if no cattle-guard was available to drive over, then it was necessary to open a gate or "gap" in the fence. Some of these gates were 'manned by children who would open the gate for you, hoping for a tip. She also felt it was her duty to open her purse, fish out a small coin and pay these kids for their service."
"We carried a ukulele on this trip and almost everyone learned to use it. Esther had a very good sense of humor but never did much work. As a child, it was her job to learn how to play the piano and was often admonished to practice. Esther usually led the singsong around the campfire in the evening. I can remember singing the song, 'In the evening, by the moonlight . . . '"
Toilet activities were relatively uncomplicated. "Mother separated boys on one side of the car and girls on the other." Steve wondered why the girls spent so much time in creeks or lakes washing the dried blood from dishrags. Then he learned that they had been pinned to undergarments.
"West of San Antonio, cash transactions were made in silver dollars. Gas pumps were rectangular steel containers with the glass globe. In some primitive areas, garages were converted blacksmith shops that also sold gas from pumps cranked by hand -- without glass globes. Dad did not trust these pumps because he could not see the gas in the globe -- he suspected that he might be cheated."
"We hit the first paved roads in Bexar Co. and headed west toward Alpine, TX. After Ft. Davis, we took a shortcut to Valentine. At one point, Dad slammed on brakes and said, look there!' The whole family got to see a large wolf about 3 ft. high. Dad marveled at it. Then through Las Cruces, NM and followed what is now I-10 almost all the way to California."
"At the continental divide, we took pictures of big signs signaling the directions to the Pacific Ocean and another one to the Atlantic. In Yuma, AZ, the timing chain broke on the Dodge. The family threw beds down in the sand and waited while the car was in the garage. There were no campgrounds or hotels. The mechanic phoned into LA for timing gear and in 36 hrs., a chain arrived on the train. Only a short time was required by the mechanic to install it."
"One night a bug flew in my ear. I screamed and Mother went to the grub-box, spooned up some butter, held a match under it and melted it and poured it into my ear. I got instant relief! It hurt very badly as it crawled around on my eardrum. I couldn't get it out by myself!"
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| Yuma AZ Board Road |
"The only way across the sand dunes at Yuma was on a board road, one car wide. Dad said 'we will not cross till midday when no one else will be on the road.' We had a 4-gal. water container for drinking water with ice in it. Dipped towels in the water and hung them on the glass windows. Every mile there was a wide place for passing, but at noon we met no cars. You can still see remnants of that old board road. (Louella Heacock, JW's mother was living with Arthur Heacock, her son, in Pasadena. He was a movie extra in any kind of movie.) Dad sent Louella a $25 check every month while she was living with Arthur."
According to Dorothy Cavanaugh, "Louella came and lived with JW and Fanny in Edinburg for three years. It was the hardest three years of Fanny's life. Evidently, Great-Grandma Louella was a fairly rigid woman."
"Driving up the coast, we stopped at all the old famous Spanish missions, one where Ramona (the song) was written. We stopped at Venice and saw the end of the immense roller coaster. The last portion had burned and washed out to sea so we could not ride it. There were gondolas in the canals at Venice."
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| And Steven peeking about Arthur's arm. Thanks to Karen Donsbach for this photo. |
"I was 13 at the time, and we took a trip to the Pacific above LA. I had a button-down suit with short legs and Mother said, bring me some of that seaweed that I see out there.' I was barelegged and barefooted when a wave hit me from behind while I was washing the seaweed. It was cold! I could not dry off until we got back to Pasadena. The Rose Bowl was a flat field with wooden bleachers all around. On a raised platform we listened to Madam Schuman Heink who was an operatic singer. It was one of the highlights of our trip. We also went to Hollywood to see where Douglas Fairbanks had filmed Thief of Bagdad.'"
"We went to Oakland, around the bay and headed east to Reno, then into Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains by what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. Next, we traveled into Thompson Canyon and on into Denver, where we camped in a campground located about a mile from the heart of the downtown. Dad stood on the Capitol steps and announced to the kids that 'we are a mile high.'"
"We went to museums in Denver. In the campground, a kid with a pet skunk walked around with it on his shoulder. Coming through the mountains, a heavy deluge had rolled a boulder down the stream and washed cars away as well. One car was still in the water, which was still flowing rapidly. Cars were lined up for miles on both sides of a river waiting to ford. Fording creeks and rivers was common because the roads were still fairly primitive. I waded back and forth to help cars across the water for about 1½ hours until the Dodge could be led across. Not a single person from about a dozen cars offered a tip or thanks for my efforts."
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| Colorado |
"From Denver, we traveled down through New Mexico and on to the Valley."
Second Trip to California (1928)
"On this trip, Dad had a blue '27 Buick sedan. Dad, Mother, Joe and I got to Kennedy, TX, passed a showroom of a Buick dealer where there was a shiny, new, green '28 Master Buick sedan. Dad phoned Ignacio Rodriguez (who worked at the Heacock hardware store) and asked how much money they had in the bank. (Ignacio had more to do with my rearing than Dad did.) Dad bought this new green car and got new license plates for it. A policeman in San Antonio came over and asked for ownership papers. When Dad asked the police why he had asked that question, the policeman replied that the front and rear plates were reversed -- I had installed them backward. (License plates were stamped 'front' and rear.') Dad and I swapped driving so that I drove about ½ the time. When I was driving one time, I hit a rock with the right-front tire and blew it out. That taught me to watch for obstacles in both tire tracks, not just the left tire track."
Comments
As I read these words, it seems that with all the unpaved roads, sleeping on the ground and poor maps, that their conditions were very primitive -- at least compared to paved highways and detailed maps of today. However, for perspective, the Heacock family enjoyed a level of technology and comfort much advanced over that of travelers of the previous generations -- that utilized wagons pulled by horses, mules or oxen, or Native American "Indians" who walked or rode horses as even more primitive. It forces us to realize that future generations will likely view our motorhomes and interstate highways as primitive too.
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